Kick It Over 26 (Summer 1991)

Canada USA Australia $3.00 UK 1.50p No. 26 Summer 91

The revolution will not be a stage play
it will not be a set-piece
a theatrical spectacle

The revolution will not be viewed from $30 cushioned seats
in the balcony
in air-conditioned comfort
The revolution will not be singing and dancing

and bright-coloured period costumes
The revolution will not be greeted with cheers and applause
by men in business suits or tuxedos
and women and furs and evening gowns
There will be no standing ovation at the end of the revolu
as the audience exits the theater
discussing the drama, the pathos, the stagih
The revolution will not be a stage play

The revolution will be our lives
it will be our deaths
The revolution will be in the streets
and in our homes

The revolution will be what we do and who we
not what we say
or what we wear

The men in suits and women in furs will not

they will fight it
and we will fight them
The revolution will not have an ending
The revolution is our lives.

1 mf

I

WE'RE BACK, FOLKS!

This is the first issue of KIO to be printed
since December, 1989. After doing the magazine
for eight years, the previous editorial board burned
out and decided to discontinue. However, a new
board was formed by devotees who didn't want to
see the magazine die. One of us was involved in
producing the most recent issue, the others have no
previous involvement in production.

We regret the delay, and our inability to an-
swer the many letters that came in asking what had
happened to us or why their subscriptions hadn't
been honoured. We've been too busy learning the
intricacies of desktop publishing and sifting through
the accumulation of submissions. Thanks for your
patience.

The new editors are committed to publishing
quarterly (should we fail, subscriptions will be ex-
tended to cover the number of issues paid for.)
Since over half the money received from sales in
stores goes to our distributors, we encourage our
readers to subscribe directly.

What We Believe

The Kick It Over collective is opposed to all
forms of hierarchy and domination, whether right
or left.

For us, revolution is more a process than an
event - a process rooted in the radicalization of in-
dividuals and in the transformation of everyday life.

Rather than make a principle out of violence
or nonviolence, we believe in judging actions on
their own merits.

We support acts of challenge and resistence to
authority, and we encourage all efforts to develop
models for a new way of living.

We are not a mouthpiece for an "official"
anarchist movement. We prefer to go beyond the
stock issues which make up the "left agenda."

Since we are interested in the creation of a
politics of everyday life, we attempt to draw out
and popularize those implicitly radical values and
lifestyles which we believe are pointing in the
direction of freedom.

We do not identify with the "official left,"
which seeks to establish itself as a new ruling
group. We identify with, and seek to give voice to,

the largely unarticulated anti-authoritarian tenden-
cies within society.

We are committed to spontaneity, by which
we mean the triumph of life over dogma. Hence,
we believe that freedom is in need of constant re-
definition.

Prisoner Subscriptions

It was once our policy to give prison inmates
free subscriptions on request, but we've had so
many requests that this is now beyond our financial
resources. We do, however, still send one compli-
mentary issue to prisoners who so request. One
magazine that is sent free to prisoners, and deals
directly with their concerns, is Prison News
Service, POB 5052 Stn A, Toronto M5W 1W4. It's
published by Bulldozer, and includes the U.S.
publication Marionette News.

Looking For New Editors

The collective needs more members in order
to achieve its goals. If you live in the Toronto area,
share the above-mentioned principles and would
like to consider joining, please contact us. We’d
also like to hear from people in other areas who
would be interested in promoting Kick It Over in
their area,
for Kick It Over
Alison Curtis, Maria Lester,

Bob Melcombe, Gary Moffatt

the editors wish to thank Karl Amdur, of the
previous collective, for his time and patience in
teaching us the intricacies of desktop publishing.

Subscribe to Kick It Over:

$9 (Canadian) for four issues
U.S.-S9 U.S.
overseas-the equivalent

All submissions and subscriptions to:

Kick It Over,

PO Box 5811, Stn A,

Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5W 1P2.

SUMMER 1991 page 2

Table of Contents

We're Back, Folks! 2

Guidelines For Contributors 4

From Neo Colonialism to New World Order 5

Paths to Social Change 9

From Buying Co-op To Political Action 16

A Woman Alone With Her Self 18

Living the spirit

On Growing Up Indian 22

Surviving Child Abuse 25

Looking to Our Roots 26

Journeys Through Central America 28

Slidebank For Social Activists 36

Smashing the Iron Ricepot 37

The Global Village 39

In Brief

Letters To The Editor 46

Cover poem by Bob Melcombe was inspired by Gil Scot-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

Guidelines For Contributors

We need your articles and letters. Only
through a constant exchange of news and ideas
among its readers can Kick It Over achieve its
goals.

Articles should be between 150 and 2500
words, though we'll print longer ones if the mate-
rial so warrants. Very long articles may be printed
over two issues.

Submissions intended for one of our regular
features (i.e. letters to the editor, paths to social
change) should be so indicated.

Payment: Fame and Glory. Five copies of the
issue in which you appear.

Simultaneous Submissions: Please let us know
to what other publications your submission has
been sent. If there is significant overlap, we will
not print.

We occasionally (not all that often) print po-
etry and fiction, provided it deals with the themes
of the magazine.

We always need good graphics, so art submis-
sions are welcome. We suggest that you not send
originals without a written request for them.

Our primary concerns are anti-authoritarian-
ism, feminism, radical ecology and methods of so-
cial change. We sometimes print articles in related
areas.

While we are committed to good writing, we
wish to encourage new or less-skilled writers to
contribute. Not everyone who has good ideas can
write well. Our primary committment is to ideas.

We reserve the right to edit for style, length,
grammar and offensive language. When editing, we
will do our best to maintain the integrity of the
ideas.

We prefer submissions to be typed, double-
spaced. IBM compatible disks are fine if you hap-
pen to have access.

We return material if a stamped, self-ad-
dressed envelope is enclosed. (If you live outside
Canada, please do not use stamps; instead, remit
cash equal to the cost of mailing it to us.)

The following guidelines and preferences are
not commandments engraved in stone. If the article
has something worthwhile to say, we will consider
printing it:

-we encourage contributors to avoid sexist lan-
guage and attitudes. We prefer "s/he" or other gen-
der-neutral terms to the generic "he."

-likewise, we discourage writing that discrimi-
nates according to youth/age, sexual preference,
class, education or ability.

-we do not print racist writing.

-please try to avoid rhetoric and jargon.

-we dislike gratuitous personal attacks; it is
not necessary to impugn a person's character to
criticize her/his ideas.

Kick It Over

April 1991

edited and published by the Kick It Over
Collective. All correspondence to Kick
It Over PO Box 5811, Station A,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5W 1P2.

Subscriptions: Canada ($9.00/4 issues),
USA ($9.00 /4 issues-U.S. currency),
Australia (9.00/6 issues Australian cash
only), UK (4 pounds/4 issues personal
checks ok, no postal money orders.)

Published four times a year. 2nd class
registration #5907. ISSN 0823-6526. In-
dexed in the Alternative Press Index.

From Neo Colonialism to New World Order

By Gary Moffatt

1. The Latest Massacre

The "Gulf War" wasn't really a war at all.
When almost thirty industrial nations drop thou-
sands of bombs on a third world country each night
for six consecutive weeks, the total tonnage used
being many times that which obliterated Nagasaki
in 1945, we are speaking not of a War but of a
Massacre, one of the first to be initiated by the New
World Order. Why did the peace movement fail so
drastically to mobilize public opinion against the
war that 91% of the American populace, and vast
majorities of the populations of the other countries
that took part, approved of what had been done at
the close of hostilities? (assuming, of course, that
the pollsters aren't lying to us.)

This article will argue that much of the answer
lies in the consistent failure of the North American
peace movement to analyze the nature and goals of
the war machine created by the USA and its satel-
lites, currently acting to preserve a "new world or-
der. " Until quite recently, the peace movement has
preferred to espouse single-issue causes, -- i.e. "no
nuclear arms for Canada" or "refuse the Cruise" in
Canada, a nuclear freeze in the USA -- without ask-
ing itself or anyone else whether the corporate rul-
ing elite can grant such demands within the context
of the colonialist role it has elected to play. More
recently, marches have attempted to link two or
three single issues, still with no basic analysis about
why so many things are wrong at the same time.

Thus, peace movement supporters at the outset
of the Massacre expressed dismay that the "peace
dividend" which had seemed within their grasp a
year earlier had been yanked away. Nobody who
understands what the industrial nations are doing to
the third world thought that peace was at hand a
year ago.

Although the collapse of Russia's empire ter-
minated the cold war pretext which had fanned mil-
itarism since 1945, the USA still has lots of pre-
texts left. Chief among these is the myth that eco-
nomic security requires a continually expanding
economy, which requires unlimited access to the
third world's natural resources and cheap labour, as
well as shunting ecological concerns to the back

burner. This access has always been the cornerstone
of U.S. foreign policy, and therefore of the other
industrial countries that now accept U.S. leader-
ship.

The only change is that these industrial coun-
tries, including perhaps Russia, are now acting in
unison instead of competing against one another.
This is not because of any sudden attainment of en-
lightenment, but because such cooperation serves
the needs of the corporations, which controlled the
U.S. government since 1865. Since WW2 these
corporations have become multinational in scope,
and the governments they control are expected to
follow suit. Let anyone who challenges the claim
that corporations control these governments try to
get elected without corporate funds.

The megacorporations and their satellite gov-
ernments are establishing a global political system
known as the "new world order." Like the isms,
this term means different things to different people;
in this article it means domination of the world by
USA, Japan and the European Economic Commu-
nity (more precisely, by the multinational corpora-
tions which control their political systems) through
a combination of economic coercion and military
intervention. To understand the Gulf Massacre and
other current events, we must understand how this
system evolved.

2. The Neo Colonial Era

Although the USA is commonly credited with
having freed its slaves in 1865, what in fact hap-
pened was a slight modification in U.S. methods of
administering slavery, which reflected the tilt in
power from the agricultural south to the industrial
north -- a tilt which the American Civil War made
official. Instead of bringing the slaves to North
America to work on plantations, the USA after
1865 left them in their native countries and im-
ported the stuff they produced instead. This created
less mess within U.S. boundaries, and paved the
way for enslavement of peoples of brown and yel-
low skin as well as black.

To make sure that they remained slaves, i.e.
forced labour with no control over their working
conditions, the Americans and Europeans divided
South America, Asia and Africa into separate politi-

SUMMER 1991 page 5

cal units known as countries, which were then di-
vided among the industrial powers.. After WW1,
similar arbitrary divisions were made in the Middle
East and Eastern Europe. The divisions completely
disregarded ethnic and bioregional considerations,
leading (since WW2 in Africa, currrently in the
Middle East and Yugoslavia) to tragic struggles for
control by disparate groups after the countries'
liberation from their colonial rulers.

.While Europe ruled its conquered countries
directly, the USA preferred a policy of "neo
colonialism" through which it installed corrupt na-
tive rulers who were willing to exploit workers and
peasants on behalf of the corporations, so long as
their small ruling elites were allowed to live com-
fortably. These elites were backed by U.S. -trained
armies or, where these proved insufficient, by di-
rect U.S. intervention. (See the long country-by-
country list of U.S. interference in other countries
which I prepared for KIO #16). U.S. corporations
knew that they could attain world hegemony with-
out permanent occupation of U.S. colonies if, as
Andrew Carnegie said in 1898, the USA "turns
from phantom schemes of annexation of barbarous
peoples in distant lands and just looks down to her
feet and sees the world."

When the European colonial empires were de-
stroyed by the first two world wars of our century,
the USA undertook to control the entire world in
this manner. WW3 began on March 12, 1947,
when President Truman proclaimed his doctrine
that the USA has the right to intervene anywhere in
the world, and immediately invoked this principle
to help suppress popular movements in Greece and
Turkey. WW3 is not a war between nations, but
between the rich and the poor, with the middle
classes generally supporting the rich so long as its
own economic comfort is provided. The battle the-
atres of WW3 shift from year to year, to wherever
people are trying to liberate themselves so that they
can feed their families-the deserts of Iraq, the
forests of Mozambique, the streets of Detroit, the
Oka Reserve and so forth.

3. The New Order Cometh

By the 1970s, U.S. corporations had gone
worldwide and, instead of relying solely on the
U.S. government as the means of exploitation, they
evolved the trilateralist doctrine that the USA,
Japan and Western Europe would dictate to the rest
of the world by controlling international finance
and foreign aid. This process was later facilitated

by the collapse of the Soviet empire and by Russia's
growing identification with the other industrialized
nations.

Since Reagan's election in 1980, the USA has
consistently reneged on its financial obligations to
the United Nations, preferring instead to dole out
foreign aid through its own U.S. AID program.
This way it can set its own conditions on foreign
aid, usually insisting that the aid go to help the
better-off farmers and consequently drive the
poorer ones off the land. This makes it easy to
transfer the land from producing subsistence crops
for the population to producing luxury crops for
export to the west.

After sponsoring a military coup in Thailand
in 1976, for instance, the USA presided over the
deprivation of 30% of the peasants of their land,
thereby creating the phenomenon of the landless
peasant previously unknown in Thailand. It also in-
sisted that co-ops be regrouped along regional
rather than village lines, to kill any grassroots
strength. There was another military coup in Thai-

page 6 KICK IT OVER #26

land while world attention was diverted to the Gulf,
also quite likely masterminded by the CIA although
the evidence has yet to appear. Both coups were in
response to growing tendencies of the civilian gov-
ernments to distance themselves from U..S. policies.
Since the second coup, residents of the Pa Kham
District of Buri Ram Province have been threatened
with arrest and eviction because of their resistance
to illegal logging and to eucalyptus growers, while
elsewhere in Thailand healthy debate over large ir-
rigation dams, salt mining, plantation projects and
community land rights has been stifled.

While consistently undermining the United
Nations, the USA has also used its influence there
to force the U.N. to follow a corporate agenda, and
made it a party to such deeds of U.S. imperialism
as the Korean War and the murder of Patrice Lu-
mumba in Zaire. Under U.S. pressure, a resolution
calling for a Palestinian homeland is ignored at the
U.N,. while one calling for Iraqi withdrawal from
Kuwait is enforced by a massacre. By allowing it-
self to be used in this manner, the U.N. has gravely
weakened its credibility and jeapordized its future.

One of the cornerstones of U.S. (or New
World Order) policies is to maintain the arbitrary
political boundaries which were drawn up in the
third world by the colonial empires in the 19th
century and after WW1, which are guaranteed to
keep each country too physically weak and/or beset
by contentions of divergent ethnic groups to act ef-
fectively against domination by the industrial states.
When Saddam Hussein showed signs of disputing
this domination, Iraq had to be further weakened.
To this end, the Americans led Hussein to believe
that they would not oppose his annexation of
Kuwait; after the deed was done, they proceeded to
demand his withdrawal under conditions so humili-
ating that no one of his temperament was likely to
agree.

The USA consistently refused to negotiate its
demands to allow Saddam to save face, thereby
making war inevitable, and at the same time misled
Saddam about his ability to resist an invasion in or-
der to encourage him to fight. During the war, the
USA increased its demands each time Saddam at-
tempted to meet them; he was only allowed to sur-
render after the USA had finished testing its
weapons of mass destruction and making Iraq an
object lesson against future third world resistance.

U.S. policy dictates that the borders of Iraq,
as well as Kuwait, remain intact. While proclaiming
that it wanted Saddam Hussein to go, the USA in
practice protected him. His removal might have led
to loss of territory by Iraq, to corresponding in-

creases in power of other states in the region, and
to Kurdish independence providing a beacon of
hope to oppressed fourth world (stateless) peoples
whom the USA is determined to keep oppressing.
The massacres of the Kurds in the north and of
Shiite Moslems in the south which followed Hus-
sein's surrender to the USA was a collaborative ef-
fort of Bush and Hussein; Bush had continued sup-
plying Hussein with arms (via Jordan) right up to
the point at which he began to massacre Hussein's
people, and after the massacre Bush delayed im-
plementing demands that Hussein surrender his ar-
senal until Hussein had time to complete the
slaughter of the Kurds and Shiites. Bush did noth-
ing to help the Kurds until France and Britain began
talking about establishing "enclaves" for them;
since enclaves might have formed the basis of a fu-
ture homeland. Bush scotched the idea by estab-
lishing "refugee camps" instead.

While third world repression remains one of
the trilateral alliance's primary goals, another is to
force down production costs at home by depriving
labour of the gains it has made during the late 19th
and early 20th century. Although the value of Key-
nesian economics has yet to be refuted, the indus-
trial states are presently reducing both the number
of jobs and the amount of social security available
on the pretext of reducing national debt. Industrial
nations are forcing their workers to compete with
those of the third world for their jobs. The USA is
forcing "free trade" down the throats of Canada and
Mexico, although both countries' populaces voted
against it. (56% of Canadians were unable to defeat
"free trade" because their votes against it were di-
vided between two opposition parties, while the
Mexican ruling party simply ignored its defeat at
the polls). At the same time, small independent
farmers are being forced off the land in both indus-
trialized and third world nations.

Any third world government that resists cut-
ting its peoples' living standards is promptly de-
prived of credit by the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank; if this doesn't force it into
line, the USA sponsors either a military coup (ie
Chile, Thailand), a prolonged war with rightwing
guerrillas (ie Mozambique, Nicaragua) or outright
invasion (ie Guatemala, Grenada.) A current
drought in Ethiopia and Sudan is the result of the
destruction of the South American rain forest,
which has been caused by the military junta which
the USA installed in Brazil in 1964 stealing peas-
ants' land and forcing them to cut down trees in the
Amazon.

SUMMER 1991 page 7

F

Such tactics aren’t
unknown to force industrial
nations into line, either. In
the mid 1970s, the USA
prevailed upon the
Australian governor general
to dismiss a government
which threatened one of its
bases there. Last year
Ontario, Canada's largest
province, elected a social
democratic government
whose first budget

maintained a certain degree
of social spending (enough to
reduce, but not eliminate,
hunger in the province,) at
the cost of increasing
Ontario's deficit. Financiers
promptly reduced Ontario's
credit rating and threatened
to withdraw various

industries from the province.

It remains to be seen how far
the new world order will go
to force Ontario into monetarism, and at what point
the Ontario government will capitulate (its social
democratic counterpart in France, under Francois
Mitterand, held out for two years before
dismantling the social reforms it had instituted.)
Whether Ontario does capitulate or not might settle
the ongoing anarchist debate about whether to vote
for social democrats or boycott elections.

What Is To Be Done?

Faced with inevitable declines in world living
standards if the environment is to be kept from
collapsing, the political right has established an
agenda which will enable the top 20% of income
earners to continue living in luxury while the rest
of us fight each other for their garbage. Since 1980
the right has had everything its own way, largely
because the left has no agenda of its own and has
confined itself to protesting, and very occasionally
resisting, rightwing measures. For the situation to
change, the populace must not only become disen-
chanted with the New World Order whose mas-
sacres it now so enjoys; it must create the means of
freeing itself from a political system in which they
are only allowed to choose between right wing par-
ties. To date, there is little indication that the peo-

ple will have
either the will
or the

resourcefulness
to break this
rightwing
monopoly on
power.

Since most
people are too
busy making
money and
watching
television to
concern

themselves with
social change,
the only hope I
can see is for
the small

minority who
do see the need
for a different
social order to
proceed to
create it, and hope that others will join when they
come to see that capitalism won't meet their needs.
Politically, we must resist all forms of exploitation;
racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic, cultural and so
forth. Culturally, we have come a long way since
the 60s in creating a spontaneous popular culture in
opposition to the one we are fed by the mass media.
However, we still have a long way to go so long as
people would rather flock to expensive superstar
events than attend homegrown cultural happenings
in parks, community centres or church basements.

Less progress has been made economically.
We cannot free the third world from exploitation
and war unless we at the same time free ourselves
from dependence on corporate capitalism. Creating
an alternative economy which can provide more ba-
sic security than do the corporations can be done,
but it's a long job and counter cultures in most
western countries have barely begun. Whether we
choose as our model the networks of worker and
consumer co-operatives of the Basque regions of
Spain (notably Mondragon), the networks of small
but democratically run firms or "artisan villages" in
northcentral Italy (notably Modena), or some other
model of our own designing, we must demonstrate
that we don't need the corporations in order to sur-
vive.

Returning to the question of the peace move-
ment's failure in the Gulf cited at the outset of this

page 8 KICK IT OVER #26

article, it may well be that there is no longer a place
for the peace movement that rose as a result of the
cold war tensions of the 1950s. This movement was
based on the affluent middle class fearing for its
families' safety in the event of accidental or
preemptive nuclear war. While still very real, this
danger now comes mainly from friction between the
have and have-not nations, rather than between the
superpowers of whom only one remains. The
'terrorist" or "freedom fighter" (depending on your
viewpoint) wings of several exploited countries
have, or will soon have, either nuclear weapons or
"smart" conventional ones capable of doing an
equal amount of damage. They won't have as many
weapons as do the industrial powers, but they'll
have less to lose by using the ones they do have.

Under these circumstances, there seems no

further point in opposing the proliferation of nu-
clear weapons without linking this to the question
of the uses to which they will be put. The cause of
peace is now so closely linked to the battle against
third world exploitation that the usefulness of a
separate peace movement is hard to see. We do
need a faction within the anti-imperialist movement
that will press for non-violent methods of resistance
wherever possible, but the peace movement has
never held a consensus on nonviolence so this role
would be beyond its scope. Folding the peace
movement would liberate the energies of its mem-
bership to join existing anti-imperialist groups, to
create new ones if they don't find any they like, or
in some cases to convert existing peace groups to
anti-imperialist ones.

Paths to Social Change

what works ? what doesn 't? share your experiences in this ongoing feature

Most anarchists would like to live in some sort
of federated tribal society, where the basic social
units are small enough for each person to have an
input into the decision-making process, and matters
of common concern would be worked out by repre-
sentatives of each tribe. None of us knows how
we ’re going to get from here to there, though some
have an idea what route they wish to travel on. An-
archists spend a great deal of time debating the rel-
ative merits of confronting the System vs. building
our own society from the bottom up, violent vs.
nonviolent confrontation, voting vs. boycotting
elections and similar topics.

The purpose of this regular feature in KIO will
be, not to take sides in any of these disputes, but
rather to trace the progress of adherents of each
position in working for social change. Both
confrontation and building alternatives require a
much wider arsenal of methods and tactics than is
currently being employed, an arsenal which will
build both on the lessons of experience and the
powers of imagination. Perhaps the tactics used
and lessons learned in one area can be of use to
people in other areas working on similar problems.

So that we can share our experiences, KIO re-
quests from our readers in various parts of the

world reports on what they've done, what's worked
and what hasn't, lessons learned etc. We'll take a
number of these reports out of the publications KIO
receives in exchange, but we'd also like to print
original material from people writing us on either a
regular or an occasional basis. The reports can be
anywhere from a few sentences to a page or more in
length, depending on how important you see the
project you 're reporting on as being.

Community Front Aids Strikers

EUGENE OREGON: After beginning a 28-month
strike against Morgan Products Ltd., a leading
manufacturer of fir doors in Oregon, workers dis-
covered that Morgan was winning the PR campaign
due to its ability to hire professional media experts.
Laws that prohibit secondary boycotts, sympathy
strikes and more than a limited number of picketers
severely restrict a union's effectiveness in a labour
dispute. To reverse this, supporters of the union in
the community formed an independent community
group whose skills were used to produce radio ads
about the strike, organize fundraising events and
turn out monthly community pickets. Most impor-

SUMMER1991 page 9

page 10 KICK IT OVER #26

tantly, the group explained to the community how
the company was taking income from the commu-
nity by replacing union workers with scabs, and
demanding concessions which would take an extra
$1.5 million from the local economy. When the
company brought court action against the activists
as "agents" of the union, the union won the court
case.

After 28 months, the company won the strike
by decertifying the union in a vote from which the
striking workers were barred. However, a perma-
nent community organization has been created to
support labour struggles, and is later supported the
striking Greyhound bus drivers, helping them to get
the kind of press coverage that underlines the com-
munity issues of the Greyhound strike. The or-
ganization also works to stop log exports, reduce
work weeks and obtain loan and tax incentives for
workers to buy mills and set up new co-operatives
and businesses. Besides better working conditions,
the organization presses for requirements that buy-
ers seeking to acquire major production facilities is-
sue social impact statements. This would discour-
age debt-ridden companies from purchasing such
facilities and retiring their debt at the expense of
Oregon's communities.

Unions have funds needed for community or-
ganizing, and can confront industrial elites by shut-
ting down production. Community groups are
sometimes not subject to the same prohibitions
(such as from picketing executives' homes) from
which unions suffer, and widespread community
support can make it difficult for a company to hire
scabs. Although lost, the Morgan strike showed the
possibilities inherent in union-community co-opera-
tion.

Portland Alliance, December 1990.

2807 S.E. Stark,

Portland, OR,

USA 97214.

Contest Encourages Thought

TORONTO ONTARIO: The Toronto Recycling Ac-
tion Committee, one of a number appointed by mu-
nicipal government but acting with a fair degree of
independence, recently held a "What Products
Make You Scream?" contest to encourage people to
think about environmentally harmful products. The
235 entries were mostly concerned about over-
packaging, disposal products such as diapers, and
products with harmful chemicals. The winner, who
identified junk mail, processed food packaging and

styrofoam peanuts, received as a prize environ-
mentally friendly personalized stationery printed on
recycled paper.

Another innovation being considered in
Toronto is a proposal by the city's Planning and
Development Department that a permanent advisory
group of young people be established at City Hall,
modelled after similar groups in Edmonton and
Seattle, to advise City Council on matters that affect
and interest young people such as improvements to
parks, community facilities and public transit, re-
ducing gang violence and combatting pollution.

City Press Releases, 22-11-90, 19-3-91.

Monitor Local Events

GABRIOLA, B.C.: New Catalyst, the B.C. environ-
mentalist tabloid, suggests that those concerned
about forestry issues should form "watershed
groups" in their own areas. Such groups can make
themselves familiar with their local forest — plant
and animal types, water sources and soils etc. --
and make systematic observations of forest condi-
tions, so that they will have the required knowledge
to participate in forest planning. The suggestions
are geared to B.C., where the Ministry of Forests
offer a number of public processes enabling citizens
to engage in planning discussions, but groups in
other areas can find out whether similar programs
exist in their province or state and demand them if
they don't. (New Catalyst, POE Box 189, Gabriola
BC VOR 1X0, subs $19.) One of the proposed
strategies, starting community land trusts to remove
property from the speculative market and permit
long-term planning for its preservation and use, is
borrowed from U.S. groups such as the Schu-
macher Society, which have been doing this for
years. For information on starting land trusts:

Turtle Island Earth Stewards, 5810 Battison St.,
#101, Vancouver BC V5R 5X8.

Community Development

ANNAPOLIS VALLEY. N.S.: One possible way for
residents of an area to encourage local control of
their own economy is for them to start a commu-
nity-based development company to help create
lasting jobs that will benefit the community. The
growth of one such company, Annapolis Ventures,
is charted in an article in Perception v.13 #4. A
two-day seminar involving county business and
community leaders of this rural Nova Scotia area

SUMMER 1991 page 11

produced a list of 200 ideas for job creation and
business development. After studies determined
which of these were the most realistic; Annapolis
Ventures was formed to carry out an action plan
based on these studies for the encouragement of
small business. A consulting staff helps people de-
termine which business proposals seem viable, and
sometimes invests money through loans or share
purchases. The company has helped create several
hundred jobs and give small businesses the data
they need to survive. Although originally govern-
ment-funded, the company planned to continue
independently at the end of its original five-year
contract.

Perception

55 Parkdale, box 3585, Stn C,

Ottawa Canada K1Y 4GI

Abandon Power Plant

TURKEY: Although not known for its responsive-
ness to public opinion, the Turkish government has
abandoned a billion dollar thermal power plant on
the Aegean coast (which was to have been built in a
forested area by a Japanese consortium) after
50,000 protesters formed a 24 km human chain to
dramatize their opposition.

Nimbin News, #2495
POE Box 209,

Nimbin, Australia 2480

Wind Energy Co-ops

DENMARK: Citizens are joining wind energy co-
operatives, and this year the country hopes to ob-
tain 2 % of its electric power from "wind parks" run
by the utility companies and by citizen-owned wind
power co-operatives. Co-ops are easy to start,
range in size from 100-200 people, and in most
cases own just one windmill, which produces
enough power for 50-100 households and reduces
by 1.1 million pounds the amount of carbon dioxide
that would be emitted by a coal-fired plant filling
the same purpose.

Earth Island Journal,

300 Broadway #28,

San Francisco, CA
USA 94133.

Autonomy Group Forms

POLAND: Here is the declaration on the formation
of the independent political group Autonomia, from
a Budapest press release:

Autonomy in our interpretation is
not only the final social aim, but also the
free, responsible, morally guided be-
haviour of self-conscious people.

The aim is a society without rulers,
without hierarchy, without authoritari-
anism; a society based on autonomy,
self-governing communities functioning
in a decentralized federation. Mutual aid,
nonviolence, tolerance and rejection of
hierarchy should be the principles of the
self-organizing society. All economic
entities (factories, companies etc.) should
be the common property of those work-
ing there, and all these should be run ac-
cording to the principles of workers' self
government. Economy should be sub-
mitted to humanitarian and ecological
goals.

Direct democracy should work in
policy. The groups of people or com-
munities should form their councils
working on the principles of direct
democracy and imperative mandate; that
is, the members should only represent
the decisions made by the voters.

No more oppression, no more ex-
ploitation!

page 12 KICK IT OVER #26

No more discrimination for po-
litical, national, racist, religious, sexual
or any other reasons!

No more patriarchal men's rule! All
women, children and elderly people
should enjoy total emancipation.

AUTONOMIA is an independent
Hungarian political group without any
leadership, which will not work either as
an association or as a political or-
ganization (i.e. a party.) The group will
not join the struggle for political power,
but will support the other independent
grassroot communities, movements and
groups, and will help them become active
in the political situation. The group will
not have its representatives, but will be
active politically in a direct way by
spreading its ideas and creating new al-
ternatives ways of life. Though the final
aim is the society without parties and
state, in the political situation in Hungary
we support all independent initiatives
which want to break the power of this
totalitarian one-party system and fight for
pluralism.

None of the existing models of
democracy in the world are attractive
enough for us, we reject all state-power
systems.

Everyone who agrees with our prin-
ciples is welcome to our groups.

from press release

Nuclear Resisters Turn To Gulf

USA: Civil disobedience arrests of anti-nuclear ac-
tivists dropped off sharply during the last four and
one-half months of 1990, as many advocates of
nonviolent direct action turned their attention in late
summer to the impending Persian Gulf War. Ac-
cording to statistics compiled by the Nuclear Re-
sister newsletter, of the 3,000 anti-nuclear attests
reported during the year, less than 10% occurred
after Nagasaki Day, August 9. In 1989, 5,530 such
arrests were reported. 57% of the arrests occurred
at the Nevada nuclear weapons test site, where ac-
tions continued into 1991. While most test site ar-
rests were not prosecuted, five people served up to
seven months in federal prisons or half-way houses
in 1990 for test site arrests from the previous year.

Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the
U.S.-led military response, activists across the
continent turned skills and determination, honed

during more than a decade of anti-nuclear direct
action, to the task of trying to prevent the Gulf
War.

Two civil disobedience campaigns claimed at
least partial victories. Repeated blocking of Cana-
dian Air Force Base runways by the Innu people of
Labrador may have been a factor in NATO's deci-
sion not to locate a new weapons centre there, al-
though overhead flights and prosecution of native
hunters continues. In upstate New York, Governor
Cuomo ordered reconsideration of plans to create a
low-level radioactive waste dump after a melee be-
tween state troopers and local citizens who stood
behind six Allegheny county elders who had hand-
cuffed themselves across a bridge.

In the harshest prison sentence of the year,
Jennifer Haines was sentenced to a maximum two
years in federal prison, simply for praying inside
the gate of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant
near Denver. Due to her absolute non-cooperation
with the legal system, Haines was convicted not
only of trespass but on a bogus charge of failing to
appear.

Nuclear Resister, PO Box 43383
Tucson, AZ
USA 85733.

10 issues: $18 U.S., $21 Canada, $28 overseas.

Social Movements and Minorities.

BROOKLYN: I would like to describe some of the
history of the NYC Brooklyn Anti-Nuclear Group
(BANG,) now defunct, to show how third world
and minority people can be put off by largely white
social change movements. BANG defined itself in
two ways: we were anti-nuclear (both power and
weapons)) and we were also anti-racist.

Along with simple moral concern, we de-
scribed ourselves as anti-racist for very concrete
reasons. The anti-nuclear cause intersected with
working-class/anti-racist issues in many ways. Ev-
ery dollar that goes for bombs further impoverishes
the already destitute, who are disproportionately
non-white. The boycott of South Africa, and fight
against apartheid, included stopping uranium ex-
ports to the west that had been mined in South
Africa and its Namibian colony. The struggle for
American Indian sovereignty is also a struggle
against uranium mining on their lands -- utilities are
not just the enemy because they run nuclear power
plants, but because the poor have the hardest time
paying bills, facing shutoffs etc. It’s third-world
countries that have been threatened with planned H-

SUMMER 1991 page 13

bombings. Blacks had a harder time fleeing Three
Mile Island because of a lack of means.

But, more generally and importantly, we saw
a contradiction between the way nuclear
power/weapons would affect all people -- as op-
posed to an anti-nuclear movement that was clearly
white, and not made up of all people. There is
something profoundly racist about this, whether or
not conscious and intentional. Poverty stricken vic-
tims of racism are going to be going about the busi-
ness of day-to-day living and survival, before
they'll get into such seemingly esoteric issues like
"nukes."

The other main problem is whites' attitudes,
and how they may turn off third-worlders. While
I've never encountered any
out-and-out racism among
white anti-

nuclear/environmental etc.
activists, there's plenty of
"objective racism.” There's a
provincial and chauvinistic
"What does racism have to
do with us and our issue"
attitude, when there's an
attitude about lack of third-
world involvement at all!

Often the problem isn't even
thought of. When outreach is
done, it's often done in an
awkward, unthinking

manner, unfamiliar with
third-world problems and
culture: "We want you
people to join us to fight the
local utility that owns the
nuclear plant" -- even when
"you people" may be more
concerned about the utility's
high rates.

Again and again at rallies I've heard "How
come more Blacks aren’t here, we should really try
to get them here," when the Holly Near clones that
pass for culture at such demos are hardly palatable
to the rap generation. The idea of demonstrating,
and especially of civil disobedience, is not taken
lightly by third-worlders who experience more po-
lice violence and heavier charges at street actions.

One could go on and on. Many of the ways in
which the anti-nuclear movement is alienated from
and alienates third-world people applies equally to
the former's relationship to poor and traditional
working-class whites. The point is that different
segments of people must be approached on their

own terms. One should never go to people living in
ghettos and on reservations saying "join our cause",
but we should say "what can we do for you", and
then work together within that context. Others'
struggles should be supported for their own
validity, not for one's own gain, with an eye to-
ward joint work.

BANG was formed just after Three Mile Is-
land, and the members voted for a multi-issue anti-
racist perspective rather than a single-issue cam-
paign. In all our literature, we not only called for
the shutdown of Indian Point (our local nuclear
power plant), but for an end to high rates; an end to
Con Edison's (the plant owner) racist and sexist
hiring and promotions; an end to illegal shut-offs
and high deposits that hit
minorities, single mothers
and the elderly the worst; an
end to their gentrifying
Renaissance program; and,
last but not least, community
control over utilities and
energy policy.

We translated our
literature into Spanish for
NYC's large Spanish-
speaking population. Al-
though we did have minimal
mixed racial membership at
times, we knew that basic
multi-racial work would take
the form of a coalition. So
BANG became friendly with
FightBack, a primarily Black
and Hispanic workers'
organization. FightBack had
a militant history of fighting
to integrate Con Ed work
crews, and was also
committed to a public takeover of Con Ed and
closing Indian Point. They were featured speakers
at our first rally; we supported their position paper
on a lack of concern in the anti-nuclear movement
for issues of the poor and minorities; and members
of both groups took part in Friday night potlucks.
We pushed hard for our community perspective and
demands in anti-nuclear coalitions, and were
successful despite often heavy resistance. We
successfully insisted on having third-world input
and speakers at rallies. Coalition literature took up
BANG-like demands.

Some notable confrontations stood out,
though. One was a rally at Con Ed's Brooklyn
headquarters called by The Brooklyn Alliance for

page 14 KICK IT OVER U 26

Survival, of which BANG was a member. Through
BANG, Black Veterans for Social Justice were in-
vited to speak, and their rep reacted to the debate
on whether to include third-world concerns in the
anti-nuclear movement with a very straightforward
speech. But when he said something like "you
know, maybe they should drop the bomb on you
all, then you'd know what our lives are like because
our neighbourhoods are already bombed out, and
then you might be sensitive to our needs" some of
the Alliance, particularly members of Mobilization
for Survival, were blown out and that was the end
of that coalition! Unfortunate, because that rally
was racially mixed, one of the few truly multi-racial
anti-nuclear events ever (at least that we knew of)..

We did a lot of community organizing, and
work with native Americans (supporting South
Dakota's Yellow Thunder Camp set up in the ura-
nium rich black hills by traditional Lakotas). Indian
Point certainly wasn't shut down, but Con Ed as a
whole was circumscribed and made to limit its rate
hikes and shut-off and deposit policies due to ef-
forts of local utility reform groups with whom
BANG had worked. BANG helped integrate anti-
racist and working-class concerns into certain local
anti-nuclear struggles. We helped initiate the Third
World and Progressive Peoples' Coalition, but
BANG was the sole anti-nuclear group in the coali-
tion. It had no Hispanic or native representation,
and the support of pro-Soviet groups precluded ex-
pressions of solidarity with dissident disarmament
currents in the Soviet bloc (which, like third
worlders, are often excluded from the mainstream
disarmament agenda). The coalition folded rather
shortly, and BANG became so depleted of members
and energy that it only exists as a name.

However, BANG'S experiences can aid those
who'd like to attempt similar coalition building
with minority and third world groups; I'd like to
hear from others who've been involved in similar
work, as I know people in other regions, as well as
many environmentalists and anarchists, have been.
Bob McGlynn
528 5th Street
Brooklyn, NY,

USA 11215.

condensed from a paper by the author

Confronting Media Stereotypes

FLORIDA: In Gainesville, the murder of five stu-
dents was followed by a rally at which several
speakers discussed violence against wimmin. The

media consistently refused to cover this portion of
their remarks, "as if strong wimmin threatened
them" according to one local feminist. Media sto-
ries reflected only the mourning and fear of the
participants, not their strength, defiance or denun-
ciation of our male supremacist society.

One member of Gainesville Women's Libera-
tion commented: "In the first couple of days after
the murders, I found myself believing that die fear
and resignation portrayed in the media was really
the way most wimmin were feeling. But then I be-
gan to notice that many more of us were taking ac-
tion to fight back, getting a gun or putting a base-
ball bat at the door and going on living our lives."
Local feminists are organizing Take Back The
Night rallies to encourage wimmen to act for their
self defense and to build a movement.

Liberation News Service

Direct Action Defended

VERMONT: Burlington citizens who tore down
the fences marking off a piece of waterfront land
which was scheduled for a luxury condo have ex-
pressed solidarity with Berliners who took the wall
down, with Mohawks who defend their ancestral
lands from Canadian developers, and with the
northcoast environmentalists who are using civil
disobedience to save the last of the old-growth
Redwood trees. The group's manifesto states that
only by moving outside the system can we change
it.

Liberation News Service

Save the Strait Marathon

NANAIMO: On August 24 of this year, hundreds
of participants are expected to swim, kayak, canoe
or windsurf for 26 km across Georgia Straight to
Hammond Bay, just north of Nanaimo, to focus at-
tention on the pollution of Georgia Strait and en-
courage people to participate in a clean-up. Last
summer over 200 people took part in the first
marathon, and at least double the number are ex-
pected this year. Some swimmers will try to cover
the entire distance, while others work in teams.

Among the 55 small craft in last year's
Marathon was a "paper boat" made from recycled
materials, including hundreds of paper bags.

Save Georgia Strait Alliance
Box 122 Gabriola Island,

British Columbia VOR 1X0

SUMMER 1991 page 15

FROM BUYING CO-OP TO POLITICAL ACTION

Editors' note : The following is abridged from a
longer article which appeared in the Autumn 1988
issue of Green Revolution.

23 years ago, a Tokyo housewife organized
200 of her neighbouring housewives to buy milk
collectively. From that modest start, the influential
Seikatsu Club Co-operative movement in Japan has
grown into a current membership of 155,000, em-
bracing over 100 branches, each composed of
roughly 500-1000 members in ten prefectures
throughout the nation, employing a full-time staff
of 700. By 1988 there were 153,000 members in
various branches throughout Japan.

Motivated by the fundamental need to combat
rising prices, in June 1965 one housewife from
Tokyo's Setagaya district organized 200 women to
buy 300 bottles of milk. Though it was not offi-
cially founded until 1968, in a sense, this was the
Seikatsu Club's first collective purchase.

What started as a strategy to save money,
however, gradually developed over the next 20
years into a philosophy encompassing "the whole of
life." In addition to cost-effective collective pur-
chase, the club is committed to a host of social con-
cerns, including the environment, the empowerment
of women and workers' conditions.

In order to cope with rising competition with
supermarkets and other co-operatives, many co-ops
have sought to expand by decreasing investment
and increasing dividends. But we believe that our
business should be run by our own investments.
This is part of the club's vision to reduce the divi-
sion between producer, consumer and investor.
When members join the co-op, they make an initial
investment of 1000 yen. This, supplemented by
monthly contributions of 1000 yen, brings the aver-
age investment to roughly 47,000 yen per person,
which is returned whenever a member leaves the
co-op.

Our investment strategy has been highly suc-
cessful, although the membership (155,000) ranks
ninth out of Japan’s 700 co-ops. For instance, we
are fourth in terms of investment capital, which to-
tals 7.5 billion yen. Because the point of investment
is not profit, the club does not offer dividends to its
members.

SUMMER 1991 page 16

BUYING POLICIES

The Seikatsu Club utilizes a unique collective
purchase system which relies on (a) advance orders,
(b) distribution and payment based on a "han" or
group, (c) the concept of "one product one variety,"
which limits the availability of any given item to a
single brand.

Although most co-ops offer a wide range of
merchandise, the club handles only 400 products in
total. We believe that limiting quantity ensures
quality; as a result, we offer only one version of
any given product. Soy sauce is produced in nu-
merous sizes and shapes in Japan, but we provide
nothing other than one litre glass bottles of thick
soy. Though limiting variety, the club is able to
streamline production and distribution. It also en-
ables us to make special demands of producers --
like leaving out preservatives.

The club also feels that limiting options culti-
vates creativity in daily life. We do not deal with
salad dressing, for example, because we want to en-
courage members to make their own.

RESPECTING THE ENVIRONMENT

We refuse to handle products if they are detri-
mental to the health of our members or the en-
vironment. Synthetic detergents, artificial seasoning
and clothing made with fluorescents are all off lim-
its, even if members make demands for them.

But our commitment to the environment is far
more extensive than that. For one thing, the club
gets safer produce by cooperating with local farm-
ers. In return for asking them to use organic fertil-
izer and fewer chemicals, members buy a con-
tracted amount of produce, and agree to overlook
physical imperfections if they exist. Members also
assist farmers with the harvest when their labour is
necessary.

We stand by the belief that housewives can
create a society that is harmonious with nature by
"taking action from the home.” And, through our
purchases and consumption, we are attempting to
change the way that Japanese agriculture and fish-
eries are operated. As a symbolic gesture of societal

responsibility for past crimes due to careless indus-
trialization, we buy summer oranges from families
with Minamata disease.

When the club cannot find products which
meet our quality, ecological or social standards, we
will consider starting our own enterprise. This can
be illustrated by the two organic milk production
facilities we currently run with local dairy farmers.

We also have an
agreement .with an organic
agricultural co-op in the
Shounai district of Yamagata
prefecture: beginning with
rice in 1972, it gradually
expanded to vegetables and
fruit, and now accounts for
30% of our total purchases.

Buying directly from
producers does more than
merely eliminate the
middleman's added dis-
tribution cost. It enhances
cooperation and awareness
by keeping consumers in
touch with the production
process. That is why our
annual summer excursion to
Shounai, which has attracted
more than 1000 members
since 1974, is so meaningful.

tial and make a constructive contribution to their
local communities. The co-op is also expanding in
Korea, but because Korean law does not yet
acknowledge the co-op system it operates there as
one of the businesses of a mutual credit organiza-
tion.

The Seikatsu Club also runs a Mutual Benefit
Fund, a service which goes beyond simply selling

EXPANDING

SOCIETY

INTO

When they observed the
advantages of natural over
synthetic soap, many of the
women began to lobby for
the banning of synthetics.

Although these efforts were
by and large unsuccessful,
they caused the membership
to seek a more active role in
politics. It has succeeded in getting 33 members
elected at the municipal level, and in the process
given women a vehicle for political involvement.

Members have also expanded into the social
sector, starting a variety of workers' collectives in
such businesses as recycling, "bento," (Japanese
style boxed lunches) and home helper businesses.
These enable members to work to their full poten-

insurance as a product. Participants contribute 200
yen per month in exchange for monetary assistance
in case of accident or illness. Also, psychological
support and, if necessary, voluntary labour help, is
provided. The not-for-profit fund is managed by a
committee.

SUMMER 1991 page 17

A WOMAN ALONE WITH HER SELF

I knew we were headed for trouble when he said

I think I'm falling in love with you

and I was thinking how a kiss

can blossom into lust so quickly

no matter who

Listen. Just because you create the illusion

of not being alone

doesn't mean I buy it

I watch you all alone together

and I know fine lines when I see them

I know you crave your freedom

and then you cannot stand it

I know about the buddy system

I see it coming to get you

I'm a woman alone with her self
I mean, men are a nice place to visit
I just don't want to live there
and I want to say yes to everything
I want to say yes to

and you know how men can be about that

A woman alone with her self
I mean, hanging with a man just takes
too much breath
You have to spend all your time
on forgiveness and you know what?

I don't have that much forgiveness left
and I need most of it
for myself

You know what I hate, though?

Saturday nights, New Years Eve, Valentines Day,

Cold, rainy Sunday afternoons
Anniversaries without the occasion

You know what I like?

Sleeping when I feel like it
and waking up with words
Eating cheese blintzes for dinner
Seven nights a week if I want to
I like having lots of secrets
I like not looking back

A woman alone with her self
A ready suitcase, hat in hand
Each time I go to leave
Her dancing shoes
Hide in my dreams

Gail A. Sctiilke

SUMMER 1991 page 18

LIVING THE SPIRIT

AN INTERVIEW WITH PAULA GUNN ALLEN

Pat Andrade: Could you tell me a bit about how
the anthology Living the Spirit, a Gay American In-
dian Anthology, came about? Certainly in terms of
finding voices -- taking control of images, it is a
very important book.

Paula Gunn Allen: Let me go all the way back --
long ago in 1974 or 1975 there was a young man
called Randy Burns, who has functioned as presi-
dent or vice-president for Gay American Indians for
a number of years. He was a student at San Fran-
cisco State at the time I was teaching there and he
came to me and said that he wanted to form a
group, a club off-campus, called Gay American In-
dians devoted to, among other things, to unearthing
the history of gay Indians throughout America, and
compiling an archive. He wanted to know if I could
help - and I could help -- 1 could help but not a lot.

I'm not an historian but I could at least lend
vocal support, and that's something I did. I went to
a couple meetings which were really neat. All these
years later, GAI is still trying to get all this stuff to-
gether. In the meanwhile there are a lot of writers,
storytellers, who are gay, who are publishing. So, I

think consequently, as a result of this life long
dream, not just of Randy's, but other people who
got involved in GAI over the years, I think that's
how the anthology was germinated.

Then, there was a man who belonged to GAI,
who is himself not Native who edited the book, and
that's Will Roscoe, and he was willing to take the
time and go through the very difficult task of
putting together an anthology. It's a very difficult
process. So, he compiled both contemporary and
ethnographic material from everywhere and then
compiled them into a book. What you see is the fi-
nal result of a lot of editing, a lot of culling. I think
I am not as happy with the book as with the
prospectus I read. I think, and I don't know this,
but I guess, it got cut down by the necessities of
trying to get a publisher. So there are a lot of tradi-
tional materials that aren't in there that I would
have loved to have seen. There is work by a woman
who is a very fine writer, but she is not herself a
Lesbian. That bothers me. There is work by people
who are not Indians, about Indians, that bothers
me. And there is a frontispiece by a well known
white writer who has spent a lot of time ripping off
Indians, and has made quite the career from it, and

SUMMER 1991 page 19

there she is in the frontispiece, and I'm kinda re-
sponsible for that in ways I don't want to go into in
public, and I'm kinda bothered by that -- but mostly
I think that the book would have been a larger book
if there had been an appropriate publication outlet
for what Roscoe had originally compiled.

As it is, the book is a beginning. It's got some
really good stuff in it. I like the book -- it's like a
promise for future books that might come out. I
have no idea how it’s doing at the booksellers so I
don't know it it’s going to be re-issued, because
that kind of thing tends to generate new volumes.
Homosexuality, male or female, was openly prac-
ticed among large numbers of tribes, prior to Euro-
pean conquest, which in some cases, means prior to
1925. We are not talking of long ago.

Among many traditional people today, gay
people, lesbians, are perfectly reasonable members
of the community. Everyone knows their sexual
preference, and nobody's arguing with it or putting
it down, or ridiculing it, but out in the larger world
you don't acknowledge it; you don't, because they
are going to come, and they are going to kill you
all, because they don't approve of your sexuality.
They aren't even going to make distinctions. They
will kill everybody -- they don't care -- they can't
tell one Indian from another, we all know this so
nobody says anything. I consider those alienated
from traditional culture -- so often they think they
are very traditional , but they have been highly
christianized, and they are very homophobic. They
are terrified of homosexuals, they want them out,
dead, beaten up; and some ugly stuff has happened

to gay people in Native communities -- I've heard
some awful stories. People have been badly hurt,
physically, emotionally, spiritually.

On the whole, my correspondence with people
who are gay men or lesbians indicates to me that,
by and large, there is a great deal of community
support -- it's just not very big, not very loud, it
might even be silent, but is large, notwithstanding
some of the exceptions I have mentioned. The
problem with the exceptions is that they are what
are noticeable, and when lesbians or gay men are
speaking to the lesbian and gay community they
tend to focus on the homophobic responses and not
to focus on the accepting responses, which is a real
problem. Our gay community wants to play "Oh,
ain't it awful," and so we sit down and we want to
play too, so we come up with all the horror stories
that we can think of.

I find that, by and large, the level of support is
probably about seventy percent and the other thirty
percent is not very supportive; and that seventy
percent ranges from indifference to warmly ac-
cepting and that thirty percent goes from irritated,
doesn't like it very much to vigourously trying to
combat it -- stamp it out. - Some people I know
have been ostracized from the reservation. A couple
have been declared spiritually dead. Some have
been jailed on reservations, in tribal jails, vilified
and abused.

These were young people, but on the whole
the letters I get, the folks I talk to, the gay Indian
people [say] there isn’t as much of that going on as
you might think. There is an ambivalence in the In-
dian world about sex roles, gender roles, and about
everything you can imagine, because we are re-
quired to live in a white world, but we are not
white. We don't think like white people; our tradi-
tions are not white, they are not European, they are
not Christian; but at the same time we are Chris-
tian, we are educated in their school system, we do
watch their television, read their books, all those
things. So we have within images of the white
world and images of our own parts and we often
don't know which is the one that is truest to our
own way.

We get mixed up, and you see what that
makes happen in respect to homosexuality, as it
happens in respect to battery, and how to raise kids,
how to deal with the old people, how to spend
tribal funds, whether or not we ought to be profes-
sionals and have our own group of lobbyists, and
until they come to terms with that, frankly, their
life isn't going to be very good even if we all van-
ish, even if there wasn't an Indian left in the world

page 20 KICK IT OVER H26

their own memory will never let them rest. They
are very foolish to think that if they obliterate us it
will all go away. They don't belong here. They
stole this, it isn't theirs, and they won't pay for it.
They won’t admit it and they won't talk about it,
but there is a lot we can do about it. We can stop
accepting our stories about who we are, we can quit
listening to them, we can teach our children to
stand up in the classroom and say "that's not true."
We can teach them to say, "You call my mother or
my dad or my uncle and they will come and talk to
the children about what the truth is about us. We
can do those things and I think we had better. We
have got to decide we are not the brutes that we
were described as. We are going to destroy us our-
selves. We don't need them to destroy us anymore -
- and they know it.

Pat: In talking about the way time has distorted,
erased, aspects of life as if existed before, certainly
something that I have noticed is the incredible si-
lence that exists around the whole issue of native
people who are gay and lesbian, and I think that's
the key word for me, really, in terms of my per-
sonal experiences — is the silence — there is such an
incredible silence. I can't emphasize that too much.
Do you want to address that?

Paula: The thunderous silence. I think that it's a
very complicated issue. When I wrote the essay that
was at the time called Beloved Women -- Lesbian-
ism in Native American Culture that is in Sacred
Hoop, I spoke at the National Lesbian and Gay
March in Washington in 1978, and a woman who
edited Conditions magazine, which is a lesbian
magazine in New York city, came up to me after
my minute and a half -- 1 think I had a minute and a
half -- to say something. She came to me and asked
me if I could write an article for the journal. She
wanted it for a year and a half from then, so it was
easy for me to say, "Oh, sure."

Well, I agonized for over a year because I
know the white man doesn't approve of homosexu-
als or lesbians -- in fact, he tends to think that's
cause for murder. It's okay to kill people if you
don't like their sexual orientation, and of course
you don't like their sexual orientation if it's any-
thing other than heterosexual, missionary position
monogamous let's get married and have babies.
You don't like it if it's anything other than that, so
you kill it. And I know the white man's tendency to
kill anything that he doesn't like - which, by the
way, I don't think is a characteristic of the so-called
right wing community, I think it's a characteristic

of Americans in general: they don't like it, they kill
it. They have different ways of talking about that,
but that's essentially what they want to do. It's the
frontier ethic. Get a gun.

Anyway, then, there is the problem of how the
world around us thinks about Indians -- if they
think about us at all. We are people, who should be
vanquished, should be destroyed, should be killed.
If the Indian people do anything to attract negative
attention, it tends to result in the death of an Indian
or three or ten. So my fear was if I said anything at
all about lesbianism in the traditional world of Na-
tive America before the white man, after the white
man, without respect to the white man, then I was
inviting that gun to come in and blow us away. I
had no right to do that; no one had any right to do
that, we had to live. In the Indian community the
silence you are hearing is the consequence of ex-
actly that.

We don't like to talk about the violence, we
don't like to deal with it. We don't like to talk
about the forced sterilization of Indian women and
men at Indian health service hospitals or public
health service hospitals. We don’t want to deal with
any of this stuff. We feel helpless, we feel power-

SUMMER1991 page 21

less, and we feel useless to do anything about it,
but we also have an enormous tendency to believe
the white stories about us. Since we are savages,
hostile, horrible people who murdered all those in-
nocent women and children during the white set-
tlement period -- since that's how we are -- how can
we ask for anything else, how can we expect that
the men don't beat up the women, how can we ex-
pect that there isn't a lot of disease and disturbance
and violence and suicide among us? That's what all
the white books say, and that's what they teach us
in schools about ourselves, so how can we expect it
to be any different? All we can do is hope that some
white will come and save us from ourselves because
we are no good, and that tends to generate a hope-
lessness and that hopelessness tends to generate vi-
olence. There is no place else to go with that anger
except for it to implode inwardly, and it does im-
plode inwardly.

So we have a combination of forces working
here to add to this horror of battering, abuse and vi-
olence that needs to stop. One of the issues is that
we have been defined as a violent people. It took a
long time to convince us, but propaganda always
works eventually. If you control everything they
think you can get them to believe it, and so we are

believing this nonsense. We also tend to believe
that should die, we should vanish. Our teen suicide
rate is the highest for any group in the nation, be-
cause these children are believing they should die,
because they are being told that over and over again
-- the Indians all went away -- the Indians all died --
I am an Indian -- 1 must be dead.

My nephew was taken by his mom to one of
the dances by the pueblos. He was little, maybe
three or so, and she kept saying for him to go out
and dance; but no, he wouldn't, and finally, in
great indignation because she wouldn't ignore him,
he said, "I can't dance, I'm not Indian", and she
said, "Miguel, yes you are, you are Indian, you can
dance," He said, "I am not Indian, I am not dead."

You see, he had watched his morning car-
toons, he knew what the truth was, and our children
are killing themselves because they are Indians,
therefore they must be dead, and they die. The
power of image is utterly terrifying. It leads to bat-
tery, it leads to rape, it leads to demoralization at
levels that are almost impossible to contemplate. It
leads to death at all levels, which of course in the
long run leaves the white world happy because they
wouldn't have to think about us any more, of what
they did or what they are doing.

On Growing Up Indian

by Randy Lewis

The reason you have Indians who have be-
come part of the gay world isn't by choice. The gay
world is a sub-culture; it is a community that has
been designed because they cannot exist within
their own culture, so they have created their own
family, mostly in urban areas. American Indians,
Alaska natives, Canadian natives, finding they can-
not exist in their own communities have become
part of these communities; but as a whole Indians
don't feel they belong to them because first of all
most Indians I know who I talk to nothing is more
paramount in their lives than their orientation, their
forced orientation, as far as being Indians.

Sexuality doesn't define them; it doesn't de-
fine who the run around with, what they do; their
Indian-ness does. Yet we deny them that right, we
deny them the right to be Natives, to be Indians
from their communities. We may not be overt about
it -- hell, we can be quite sneaky and shady about

it, we can undermine them as children. I know a lot
of children who grew up in Salilo, whose grand-
mothers raised them, and everyone in Salilo spoke
Indian. Everyone. I can't think of anyone down
there who didn't; even the store owner who was
white spoke Indian, and you could always tell those
kids whose grandmothers brought them up because
they sounded like old women when they were four
years old, That was pretty okay, though, because
when kids are about five years old and start going
to school and running around with each other, they
make the break themselves, they see how other lit-
tle boys make that transition.

One of the greatest crimes one could commit
was pointing to them and saying, "Look, he talks
like a woman." I never heard that done. That would
be a crime on you, not on the child. It would be re-
flected on you so you never saw that; but now,
should it happen, a father would probably disown
his child, but that's okay for the most part because

page 22 KICK IT OVER #26

most fathers may father their children, but they
hardly ever are parents to their children. I say that
for fact, because I know it; I've watched my broth-
ers.

These are some of the greatest sport fuckers in
the world. They go from basketball tournament to
basketball tournament laying their seeds across the
country. They don't know where half their family
is. I come from a family of seventeen kids. When
my dad died there were six stepwives there. It's not
uncommon. I find that throughout Indian country.
Yet we have these double standards -- men can go
out sowing their wild oats wherever they care to;
that's morally acceptable, or at least it has been un-
til this time. I think gradually I see more women as-
serting a few more laws and rights within their own
home, but it's been a false sense of values, and
maybe an over-emphasis on a man’s role that has
kind of clouded a lot of things, and I started won-
dering why.

I think one of the reasons is, (or what I sur-
mise to be the reason,) you know, a century ago
our people were not many more in numbers, actu-
ally, but our men had a
meaningful place within
the tribe. We were

hunters, we were

warriors, we were

protectors of our people;

I call them horse libera-
tors, I don't call them
horse thieves, I call them
horse liberators because
the people we took them
from had no respect for
them to begin with, so
we liberated them from
the white people. We
had a place; men had a
place within the culture.

Since then, reservations
having been established,
a man's role, a man's
occupation came to an
end also, or at least
discredited it.

So, what happened
to him? Well, for the
early stages, there were
very few men who
survived. I think that's a
real reflection if you
start looking at it. There
were very few men; our

existence, or subsistence, became dependant on the
non-Indian culture, through annuities, rations being
delivered to the reservation, mostly just to barely
stave off starvation. We were given plows and
jackasses; people who had no land that could be
farmed — we were given land that was unfarmable,
in areas white people didn't want. We were given
these impossibilities to exist, but still we existed;
but it doesn't deny the fact that our role model, our
men's role model, was gone. All it takes is that one
generation, two generations.

You women are lucky; your role stayed intact.

I am not saying it's been easy, but you were fortu-
nate in that respect; you are still the head of the
household, not always by choice either; you are the
mother, you are the keeper of the culture and in
most cases the maintainer of the language, the
nurse, the cook. I know they are not very glam-
ourous, you can’t romanticize about them very
much, but your role, your employment, was a lot
more secure.

Little girls had something they could look up
to, little boys didn't. The role model they were

SUMMER 1991 page 23

given was a drunk, again and again, not by choice,
and is it a wonder that things have gotten where it
is? Our role models were cowboys who came and
went, "weekend warriors", I guess you could call
them, people who hung around the bars, people
who never hung around home.

I was very fortunate in that respect because I
had my great-grandparents; they knew better than
to leave me with my mom. She had all she could do
just to put food on the table, when she was support-
ing a household full of children; and you know
what's worse -- she was raising children and she
was raising her husband, because we have little
boys who grow up to be big boys, and they always
have mom. I'm sure you have seen it. You go to
Indian homes, you always have the older boys
hanging around and hanging around. You never
outgrow your children, they are always there, and
finally you get lucky and you die. Well, someone
has to take the place of mom, so we get married and
condemn some poor woman to a sentence in which
there is neither pardon or parole: to forever be a
mom to her husband, to her children. I mean, she'll
be lucky if she has all daughters, then she will raise
them and then she will just have her husband to
raise.

It's done nothing for our boys; it’s created a
lot of strife and factionalism, a lot of division and a
hell of a lot of misunderstanding in Indian commu-
nities, and a hell of a lot of friction. On my reser-
vation, you know what the ratio is? There are six
women to every man. That's due to a hell of a lot
of suicide, homicide, fratricide, not to mention in-
cest, child abandonment, alcoholism and drug ad-
diction to the point of total oblivion. You know, the
women on our reservation are the most highly edu-
cated, highly skilled, not to mention dedicated with
the greatest amount of conviction of any of the
workers of the employable work force -- yet they
hold the lowest of all the paying jobs, the lowest
rung on the ladder in employment. The people we
have in charge of our reservation -- we have four-
teen people in the duly elected business council —
and practically every one of them are men.

My father was a great example for me in one
way, because I was able to see someone who had
such immense love for his friends, his rodeo
friends, the cowboys he hung out with. There was
great camaraderie there. He showed them such love
and generosity. But as for me, a dog could have
done what my dad did for me as a father. He never
showed the same love for his own children because
it didn't fit into the image of Indian men. He was

only allowed to show such camaraderie to his
friends.

A lot of Indian men are scared shitless. They
have inherited and absorbed the Catholic virtues of
guilt and shame. They are terrified of their sexual-
ity, often trying to prove they are the barbarians
that the media makes them out to be. There is a
whole pub culture that's operating, where men sit
around the pub all day and drink, and so what if
they don't come home? They have some woman at
home that will feed the kids, take care of them, and
woe to the woman tfho deviates from that role. The
men will beat the shit out of them, often deliber-
ately disfiguring them so that no other man will
look at them. The men are trapped in the image of
what has been created for them and they will deal
severely with those who deviate from that image.

I say to the women: you got to take power.
Don't let them give you anything. If they give it to
you, it ain't worth a fuck; you have got to take that
power in order to show that you have the capacity
to do so. It's like when colonists say, "We will give
Indian people land rights." Bullshit! They aren't
giving us fuck-all, we as Indian people are re-
taining those land rights.

I see a lot of men condescendingly and pa-
tronizingly giving women the right to do things --
that's bullshit. Experience has shown me that men
aren't as concerned with the consequences of their
decision making but with the fact that they have the
power to make decisions.

I recently went back to the high school that I
graduated from to make the commencement ad-
dress. When I was at school, out of 160 Indians,
four of us graduated. On this visit I saw one of my
white teachers. I remember her saying that she was
going to make damn sure we learnt English. And I
sure learnt English, in fact I learnt it better than the
white kids. And I went up to this former teacher
and said something to her in my language. She was
totally flabbergasted. She didn't understand what I
was saying. I said to her, "You have been here
thirty years, and you don't speak a word of Indian!
Who are you calling dumb?"

Education, which is meant to help us survive,
has instead been an exercise in cultural disintegra-
tion. Indian education is the last frontier of the
Puritans.

I'm not giving up on Indian people. They
might not like me, I might be an irritant to them,
but they are stuck with me. A lot of Indian gays and
lesbians just give up on their Indian communities
too quickly.

page 24 KICK IT OVER U26

Surviving Child Abuse

by Cheryl Bonfanti

I am a survivor of child sexual abuse and it
has taken me some time to be able to admit it to
myself that, yeah, I have family members that do
not meet my expectations of what a family should
be like This part I cannot change, no matter how
hard I try or want. I am married now for the second
time, and i truly feel that my husband is the right
mate for me for a life of happiness and love to-
gether.

My abuse started when I was between the ages
of 8 -- 9 years old and continued until I was old
enough to stop it myself at age 16. When I started
to threaten to tell all of the neighbours and the
preacher in our small town community, I was told
that I was crazy and that I needed to be put in a
mental institution. At one point my father even
tried to have me committed to the Lynchburg
Training School and Hospital for mentally ill peo-
ple.

I am now doing an 11 -year sentence because
$56.00 meant more to my sister and her husband
than my going to prison. This was his way of get-
ting his revenge and getting me to shut up
and to stop talking about this sexual abuse.

The justice system was his back-up, and it
fell for all his lies. That's a small town court
system for you.

In December of 1987 I entered the
Virginia Correctional Centre for Women, in
Goochland, VA. Here I have gotten the first
chance to talk openly about my anger, hate
and frustration over what has happened to
me in my childhood. I am in a group of less
than ten women, and we all have horror
stories that we do not want publicized or
printed on the front page of the local
newspaper. By being in this group, I have
been able to get all of these negative feelings
out and start communications that are sin-
cere. I would like to say that a lot of women
that are here in prison need some type of
support, and even though the types of
support groups are few and far between I am
so lucky to be a part of this group. Thank
you, group members, for giving me the
courage to write this article.

For as long as I can remember I have
been so mad at the world, and really didn't
know why, but I knew that my life was
nothing more than a big fat lie. I had

pretended that I had the iderl - .Jhood and the
ideal parents, and all the time I hated the whole idea
of what I was hiding and running from. I just didn't
know how to get out of the lie or what to do.

When I first got here at the prison I put myself
into all of the educational and outside programs that
I could find. I had open space, and could run for-
ever and not have to think about any of it until bed
time. One day, that all changed when my counselor
called me to her office. When I walked in, there sat
another counsellor that headed up the survivors'
group. At that time. I knew this was not going to be
a good day to talk. I had to go through all of my
garbage, and together all three of us cried and held
each other for support. I couldn't run any longer,
and the answers that I had been looking for were
not to be found in any text book. I have since that
time gone through my story again and again but,
each time I do I learn more about myself. In the
process, I continue to cry away my pain if that's
possible. The members of the group give me
courage to keep digging and be able to go on with
my life and to be a better person in the long run.

SUMMER 1991 page 25

My family continues to deny that any of this
ever happened to me during my childhood. I know
it is the truth, and I am the one who has to carry it
around and deal with the scars of it all. The scars
will last forever, but the pain has to be dealt with
and made to go away. In order to do that, you have
to be able to talk about it openly with others who
have been in your shoes before. You are going to
need lots of support from friends and family that
are willing to hear you out and not judge you or
blame you for what has happened in the past. When

you find that person you have a real friend and a
firm support system.

I want to encourage all wimmin in and out of
prison, if you have a horror story that you have
been carrying around for years, find a good strong
support group and give it all the extra baggage you
have. You'll feel better to get it all out.

In most of the prisons there will be one group
that stands out above the rest and this is the one that
stands out here at VCCW.

LOOKING TO OUR ROOTS

GROWING UP UKRAINIAN IN CANADA

By Alys Murphy

My parents were people of the land. My father
was from near Rohatin, my mother from near
Skalat. They met and married in Toronto, and were
active in Ukrainian Hall activities until 1945, when
we moved to Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto. It
seems every Saturday and Sunday of my childhood
was occupied attending either weddings and
popravlinya, or 25th anniversaries. Those were my
connections to the Ukrainian community.

When I was growing up in Scarborough, then
an almost exclusively Anglo environment, being
Ukrainian was not something to be proud of. My
names were mangled and happily mispronounced,
as though it was an accomplishment not to be able
to say them, until I could hardly wait to change by
marriage to an Anglo name that I would not have to
pronounce, explain or spell ever again. When my
mother came to school functions, teachers would
talk at her through me. They would say things in
English to me, and I would turn and say them in
English to her. Eventually, she stopped coming to
the functions.

My leather boots, sheepskin-lined and care-
fully made by Nick Sendun, were an object of
ridicule at school. In turn, I hurt my parents, who
had scrimped to provide them, remembering bare-
foot winters. I demanded boots from Eaton's, rub-
ber ones like everyone else's. When my parents in-
vited my schoolmates to supper in the gracious way
of all Ukrainians, suspicious grimaces and "yuk"
were the initial responses to the "funny" food --

until they tasted it. All the same, I got "jovial"
comments about "garlic snappers." Need I go on?

Perhaps only to mention the time when I was a
little girl, and was present to hear two Anglos, for
whom my father had done a favour, compliment
him by comparing him to a "white" man. That one
took me back a bit... I thought I was white, if I ever
thought of it at all. Small things, you may think,
and so they may be - but not to a child. They left
their mark, and for many years I avoided being
Ukrainian as hard as I could.

In the process of learning things unrelated to
being Ukrainian, I learned some things about being

SUMMER 1991 page 26

Ukrainian that shocked and surprised me. I learned
that what my parents and I had experienced in this
tolerant country was racism, I learned that racism is
lies. I learned that one way to combat racism was to
reclaim my culture proudly. I determined to unlearn
the lies about who and what my people were, and to
learn our true story.

I started to read. Not history books. History
books are written by people with the power to make
the books say what they want, not what is true.
History books are not about our people in Ukraine,
they are about who ruled over us. I read about
political prisoners, about anti-semitism, about
fascistic elements, genocide by nuclear accident,
about deliberate starvation of six million people in
Ukraine. I read about the treatment of the first
Ukrainian immigrants, about IQ tests created to
keep Slavs out, about persecution of the
Doukhoubors, stories of the IWW and the general
strike, WW2 internment camps, and closing of our
meeting places here in Canada.

I have been finding out what has really hap-
pened to us. How we were really treated through
the past twenty centuries. I learned about who
industrialized the land and exported the products to
a central government, about invasions of Ukraine
by those greedy to exploit and consume her re-
sources, to subjugate and enslave our people to cre-
ate their profit, to exterminate a way of life many
thousands of years older than the history we are
taught by rulers, and their enforcers, school,
church and police.

We have had our pride and dreams and dignity
wrenched from us, our children taken away under
various guises, our earth -based religions extermi-

nated (preserved only in part by the cleverness of
our wimmin.) We have been imprisoned for speak-
ing or writing our language, punished for following
our customs and culture, denied the ability to trace
our connection to our ancestors through our
mothers' line.

All this for power and profit.

The more things I learn about the history of
Ukrainian people, the closer the parallels I see be-
tween our history and the history of the indigenous
people of Canada. Like us, they have had their na-
tive land, language, culture, religion and children
violently stolen from them. Have had their very
names stolen from them. They too have been
robbed, tortured, humiliated and murdered for the
very same reasons -- power and profit.

Too many of their people, like too many of
our people, have sought temporary refuge from
their pain in alcohol. We and they have been
blamed for that pain and humiliation, and called
dirty, ignorant, shiftless. Those who have fought
back are denounced as criminals and terrorists by
those who make the profits and hold the power.

We, whose parents, grandparents and count-
less ancestors have lived on and loved Ukrainian
land for tens of thousands of years, have a respon-
sibility. We who have endured racism have a re-
sponsibility -- to not perpetuate it, and to not ignore
it when it no longer directly injures us. Our respon-
sibility is to actively oppose racism and to actively
support those people here in Canada who are strug-
gling for their own land, for their own self deter-
mination. Is that not the essence of the struggle of
our parents and grandparents, and which continues
today in Ukraine?

It is our ancient tradition to honour those who
extend hospitality to us. This land belongs to those
who are now engaged in their own struggle for life
in Kanesatake... Lubicon... Kanewake...
Ganienkhe... Restigouche. . . Temagami... Nitassi-
nan... Akwesasne -- names that perhaps we don't
learn to pronounce?

I dedicate this diatribe with love and pride and
respect to the memory ofmy father, Michael Choj-
can — whose real name was Mikhaild Xoytson.

w

SUMMER 1991 page 27

JOURNEYS THROUGH CENTRAL AMERICA

MORALE HIGH, BUT LONG PEOPLES' WAR INEVITABLE

by Jon Reed

Editors' note: while we were in limbo, Kick It
Over received several reports from Jon Reed, a
writer travelling in Latin America. We found these
first-hand reports interesting, and offer the
following excerpts from some of his reports.

I. Panama (Christmas, 1990)

In the destabilized wake of Just Cause, the
U.S. and the Endara junta have done little or noth-
ing to help the nation's estimated 15,000 war
refugees, who continue living in schools, in refugee
camps and in the homes of relatives. Nor has the
government done very much for the battered ma-
jority population of the country -- the workers, stu-
dents, Indians, campesinos, unemployed, and
working poor. Despite a clamour by human rights
organizations and the families of the killed and dis-
appeared, neither the U.S. nor the Endara adminis-
tration have offered anything substantial in the way
or reparations, nor even minimal cooperation in
identifying the dead and missing. In the light of
what many Panamanians will tell you are thousands
of dead and wounded -- many of whom, according
to the opposition, lie hidden in unmarked mass
graves inside U.S. military bases -- government
callousness and indifference threaten to arouse a
firestorm of anger.

Isabel Corro, of the Association of Families of
the Victims of December 20, summarizes the rising
ire of many Panamanians: "One year after the inva-
sion, the dead call out to us from the mass graves,
demanding justice. Our orphans grieve for their
parents, who will never see them grow up, who
will never have the privilege of knowing their own
children. None of the crimes of the invasion will be
forgiven, and none of our victims will be forgot-
ten."

Recent polls indicate that the government has
lost almost all of its support--with the notable ex-
ception of the wealthy elite, whom the underclass
derisively called the rabiblancos, the "white-tailed"
oligarchy, who seem to be thoroughly enjoying
their unfettered power and profit-gouging after 22

years of populist (Omar Torrijos, 1968-81) and
pseudo-populist (Manuel Noriega, 1981-89) mili-
tary rule. Although most Panamanians are opposed
to a military-style coup to unseat Endara, 86% of
those approached in a recent poll stated that "social
justice" is definitely lacking in today's Panama.

As the Grinch Who Stole Christmas prepares
for a 1991 mega-Blitzkrieg on the other side of the
world, in the Persian Gulf, the grassroots rank-and-
file of Panama are neither happy nor hopeful. Al-
though an ever-broader segment of the grassroots
are starting to get organized, common consensus
has it that the fight for Panamanian sovereignty and
social justice will be a long and uphill battle.

December 20, 1990. One year to the day after
the Yankee Blitzkrieg. Thousands of black-clad
workers, professionals, students, wimmin, barrio
dwellers, and families of the murdered and disap-

SUMMER1991 page 28

peared have assembled in front of the Church of El
Carmen in a middle-class neighbourhood of Panama
City. Beneath banners denouncing the U.S. South-
ern Command's continued military occupation, and
amidst placards condemning the political repres-
sion, mass firings and neo-liberal shock treatment
of the "Civilian Dictatorship of Guillermo Endara,"
an energetic and militant crowd surges and chants
through the commercial district of the capital.

The afternoon's protest is called La Marcha
Negra, the Black March, or the March of Mourn-
ing. The mobilization has been organized by the
Association of Families of the Victims of the Inva-
sion and by the Committee of the Rescue of
(Panamanian) Sovereignty. La Marcha Negra fol-
lows on the heels of three months of street demon-
strations, strikes and protests organized by trade
unions and a united front of the emerging popular
movement.

In the economically destabilized, polarized and
repressive aftermath of the invasion, the bulk of
Panama's 2.3 million citizens are hard-pressed to
survive and to get themselves organized. As a Na-
tional University professor explained to me during
the Marcha, "This is the worst political and eco-
nomic crisis in Panama's history." As Raul Leis put
it in an op-ed piece in today's La Prensa, "Panama
today is an occupied country, with a non-sovereign
government engaged in implementing an unpopular
undemocratic program of economic readjustment."
According to Leis and other analysts, the pre- and
post-invasion damages of U.S. low-intensity and
(high-intensity) warfare amount to four billion dol-
lars in losses for the Panamanian economy-a crip-
pling sum for an underdeveloped and dependent
country whose Gross National Product has fallen to
approximately five billion dollars per year (the
GNP has fallen 25% between 1987-90.)

As La Marcha Negra continues its three mile
procession toward the bombed-out ruins of El
Chorrillo, a young woman in black jeans and shirt
hands out a leaflet entitled "Fuera Tropas Yanquis
de Panama" (Yankee Troops Get Out of Panama.)
The leaflet summarizes the damages resulting from
the war and the continuing occupation, and then
catalogues some of the repressive measures taken
by the Endara-Arias Calderon-Ford administration
over the past twelve months, including mass police
sweeps, searches and arrests in barrio districts by
the Panamanian police and U.S. combat troops; the
dislocation, razing and burning of squatter
communities in Panama City, Colon and rural ar-
eas; repression against high school and college stu-
dents; massive dismissals and criminal charges di-

rected against dissident government and private
sector workers and the entire leadership of the trade
union movement; and the violent suppression of
street demonstrations here in the capital.

In the Banana and Service Industry Republic
of Panama, unemployment stands at 25 % of the to-
tal workforce. Forty per cent of the country's fami-
lies are living in poverty. Consumer prices are ris-
ing; wages are being driven downwards; working
conditions are deteriorating; crime and violence are
increasing; and social services and benefits are be-
ing reduced. Since the first of the year, 20,000 of
the country's 150,000 public sector workers have
been fired from their jobs; many, if not most, for
political reasons, according to opposition
spokespersons and the non-governmental National
Commission on Human Rights In Panama
(CONADEHUPA.)

Another 90,000 private sector workers lost
their jobs as a consequence of the U.S. economic
blockade of 1987-89. In addition 40,000 citizens
(unionists, students, journalists, intellectuals, citi-
zen militia members, ex-military officials, etc.) are
facing potential criminal charges in a government-
inspired witch-hunt which has been characterized
by CONADEHUPA as "judicial terror" -- all be-
cause of trade union or grassroots work carried out

SUMMER 1991 page 29

during the Noriega era or for their armed or un-
armed opposition to Operation Just Cause.

Not only have Uncle Sam's subsidies been
meagre and slow in arriving, but these "gifts" are
being delivered with extortionist-style austerity
strings attached, i.e. demands that the Endara-
Calderon-Ford junta privatize and "rationalize” the
economy. This shock therapy - currently in vogue
from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego as well as in
Panama-demands the firing of thousands of work-
ers, sharp reductions in wages and benefits, the
auctioning off of state-owned, trade-unionized sec-
tors of the economy; the elimination of tariffs
which have been used to raise government revenues
and to protect Panamanian businesses from being
swamped by the multinational corporations; and the
implementation of higher prices and taxes for the
consumers and lower-income majority. In short,
Torrijos-era social democracy (or what was left of
it after the Noriega debacle) is being eliminated in
favour of the traditional Banana Republic model.

Following a cruel and Machiavellian pattern of
U.S. economic policy in the region, Panama's aid is
expected to be cut back significantly in 1991-92.
This will mean further belt-tightening for the grass-
roots, but it will also mean higher profits for the
multi-national corporations, who will be happy to
take advantage of lower production costs and a
weakened trade union opposition as they expand

strategic markets and salvage, at rock-bottom
prices, the profitable sectors of the economy. Be-
sides bolstering the sagging profits of the multi-na-
tional corporations, an ongoing IMF/AID program
of institutionalized economic destabilization will
undoubtedly provide a strong rationalization for a
permanent military occupation to keep grassroots
resistance under control, and a de facto, if not for-
mally legal, control over the Canal Zone extending
into the 21st century.

As disgruntled Panamanians will tell you on
the streets, the real reason that the Bush Gang car-
ried out Just Cause was not to capture the CIA's
erstwhile partner-in-crime and accomplice in dirty
tricks, Manuel Noriega, but to destroy a potentially
populist and nationalistic Panamanian Army and to
abrogate the terms of the 1977 Torrijos-Carter
Canal Treaty, which calls for Panama to control the
Canal and for the closure of strategic U.S. military
bases by the year 2000.

In the realpolitik world of the 1990s, it is no
longer necessary for the Washington-Tokyo-Berlin
axis to make concessions to the Third World.
Therefore, it is likely that the U.S. will do every-
thing in its power to retain practical control over
the Canal (even as Panamanian figureheads are
placed in nominal authority), the military bases and
the country itself as a 21st century neo-colony. As
one of Bush's favourite strategic thinkers, Roger
Fontaine, stated rather bluntly in February 1990:
"with the abolition of the Armed Forces of Panama,
the capacity of Panama to defend the Canal has
been radically reduced, making it impossible to
hand over the principle responsibilities (of running
the Canal) at the beginning of the next century."

Endara's policies and the continuing destabi-
lization have fueled the anger of a militant and in-
creasingly well -organized grassroots resistance,
which has carried out a series of mass street
marches with up to 50,000 participants between
October and December, as well as a quite success-
ful national strike on December 5. Whereas La
Marcha Negra was committed to nonviolence, there
is a genuine armed resistance developing in
Panama.

The real Resistance is definitely not pro-Nor-
iega, who in the eyes of today's rebels never lifted
a finger to help the poor, working class and
campesino majority of Panama. Nor is it a Resis-
tance which hopes to replace one section of the oli-
garchy with another set of militarists. The real
Resistance in occupied Panama today is pro-inter-
nationalist, pro-grassroots, and conscious of the
fact that building a mass based popular movement is

page 30 KICK IT OVER #26

and will be today's, next year's and the next
decade's priority.

Genuine acts of resistance and sabotage will
be carried out, as opposed to Guerra Sucia's dirty
tricks such as discotheque grenade attacks and spu-
rious jailbreaks and police revolts. However, this
Resistance will be subordinated to the building of a
mass majority movement which is determined to
implement the Torrijos-Carter treaty and take over
the Canal, to close down the U.S. military bases,
and to restructure the politics, economics and cul-
ture of Panama.

2. Costa Rica

Cruising in a Budget rent-a-car, under a glit-
tering canopy of stars, a stone's throw from the
pounding surf along Costa Rican highway 36 be-
tween the Panama border and the Caribbean port of
Limon, the social and economic decomposition of
Central America and the wars in El Salvador and
Guatemala seem far away. But perhaps not that far
away -- down the road there's an abrupt gash in the
rainforest, the site of a CIA radio installation, radio
impacto, which until recently beamed U.S. propa-
ganda into Nicaragua and Panama. Now that pro-
U.S. regimes have been installed on both sides of
Costa Rica’s borders, the 24-hour-a-day armed
guards have been relaxed, but the barbed wire fence
and cinder-block sentry post, standing in front of
three gigantic radio towers, are a graphic reminder

that Costa Rica's bucolic social democracy and non-
aligned foreign policy have become a thing of the
past.

Some of the highlights of the week in Costa
Rica's rightwing dailies. La Nacion and La Repub-
lica, include: the war in the Middle East and the
steep rise in domestic gasoline and diesel prices; the
IMF/AID-imposed consumer price hikes; more pro-
posed cuts in social services; gunrunning and coke
smuggling in Limon (carried out by a still-opera-
tional Nicaraguan Contra network); and the erec-
tion of a $20 million U.S. military radar station on
the Nicoya Peninsula. The Tico Times, the liberal
San Jose English language weekly, has recently
been running feature stories on Costa Rica's ram-
pant deforestation; pesticide contamination; eco-
tourism; and the post-invasion situation in Panama -
- this week covering the exhumation of a mass
grave in Colon, filled with victims of the U.S. mil-
itary intervention of last December.

Last night, shortly after driving past a pesti-
cide-reeking banana plantation, I was forced to stop
by an armed Costa Rican Guardia who pointed his
U.S. -supplied M-l carbine in my face and pawed
through die van, ostensibly looking for contraband.
His attitude and camouflage outfit were a drastic
change from the polite demeanour and boy scout
uniforms that I remembered the mostly unarmed
Tico police wearing during the reign of Oscar Arias
(1985-90.) But this is the new White House-tailored
Costa Rica, I told myself, fired up to fight the war
on drugs and subversion, and determined to elimi-

SUMMER 1991 page 31

nate the "creeping socialism" of public welfare,
consumer subsidies, and government control over
banks, insurance companies, and utilities. In the
post-Esquipulas, International Monetary Fund ad-
ministration of President Rafael Angel Calderon,
what really matters are U.S. transnational profits,
government austerity, regional security (no more
leftwing revolutions), and timely debt payments to
the international bankers— not Nobel Peace Prizes.

I relaxed a little as he asked me in slurred,
drunken Spanish "Tiene usted una grabadora?" (do
you have a tape
recorder?" I realized that
he was looking more for
a bribe than for a
surface-to-air missile. If
this had been one of the
more repressive

neighbouring banana
republics, it would not
have been that
humourous. Still, for a
country that supposedly
abolished its army 40
years ago, there seem to
be a lot of guns and
security forces around.

According to the
leftwing weekly

Adelante, the tourist
paradise of Costa Rica
(population three mil-
lion) now has 25,000
police and Guardia,
counting the reserves and
police auxiliary, with
U.S. -prompted security
expenditures increasing
30% in two years. These
unnecessary and in fact
unpopular increases in
military spending are
especially irrational,
given the fact that the country is essentially
bankrupt, with the highest per capita debt in all of
Central America. Meanwhile consumer prices, as in
all of Latin America, have risen sharply, while
social services are being cut back or privatized,
leading some analysts to predict that Costa Rica
will soon be experiencing mass political protests,
like its neighbours. A number of unions have
recently gone on strike to protest the drastic price
increases in public services, transportation, and
foodstuffs, while leftwing intellectuals have loudly

complained about Costa Rica's transformation into
just another U.S. client state.

Lately, it seems like negotiations have been in
the news a lot -- between government officials and
left-wing opposition movements in El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Nicaragua -- as well as negotiations
here between the international bankers and the
Costa Rican government. Today's news focuses on
the latest maneuvers between Calderon administra-
tion officials and the U.S. AID debt collectors, who
are demanding that Costa Rica step up the required

economic shock

treatments that are being
applied throughout Latin
America. While already
pauperized citizens have
been sacking stores and
supermarkets in the
Dominican Republic,
Venezuela and Peru, and
setting up street
barricades in Managua,
here people on the street
are not doing much more
than just complaining --
at least for the moment

3. Nicaragua

In Nicaragua, the
Chamorro/UNO junta
has been coerced into
negotiations (although
each time breaking
government promises as
soon as the strikes and
negotiations end,) and in
fact, has been forced to
accept a form of co-
governance, not because
the Somocistas and the
rightwing have mellowed
out, but because the Sandinista grassroots
opposition is the strongest force in the country. As
Daniel Ortega promised, the Sandinista rank-and-
file may have lost the U.S. -sabotaged February 25
elections, but they are continuing the process of
participatory democracy, "governing from below.".

As recent events illustrate, if Chamorro's cir-
cle refuses to negotiate, or goes too far with their
IMF-prescribed shock therapy, they'll be over-
thrown by the highly politicized and armed
Nicaraguan majority (those 41% who voted Sandin-

page32 KICK IT OVER #26

ista or those who would have preferred to vote San-
dinista but voted for UNO on pragmatic grounds.)
As the neo-liberal shock therapy of the Chamorro
administration literally threatens to destroy the

livelihood of the Nicaraguan working class
and the poor, the Bush administration has offered
very little in the way of economic relief, leading
some analysts to speculate that Washington would
welcome a civil war in the belief that this would
lead to the final destruction of the Sandinistas.

During the July national strike, when heavily
armed Contra militiamen shot it out with Sandinista
strikers in the streets of Managua, Bush did offer
his "help" -- in the form of a U.S. invasion force to
crush the FSLN. Chamorro and her advisors wisely
declined.

Even with the ending of the Contra war and
the carrying out of two semi-victorious national
strikes and largescale grassroots mobilization,
things are not improving for the Sandinista rank-
and-file nor for the overwhelming majority of the
population. Prices have skyrocketed, unemploy-
ment has climbed to over 40%, social services have
deteriorated, and the
crime rate has soared.

Chamorero and the UNO
gang are willing to nego-
tiate when necessary, but
they are also doing ev-
erything in their power
to destroy the gains of
the Sandinista

Revolution -- cutting off
funds and jobs in all
those areas where the
Sandinista unions, co-
operatives, and

grassroots organizations
are strong; allowing the
"demobilized" Contra
army to seize land, rustle
cattle, form rural zones
of control, and establish
urban strikebreaking militias; and re-privatizing the
land and the economy. But Chamorro's attempts to
reverse Sandinismo are having mixed results. The
majority of the Nicaraguan people are aroused and
organized, Sandinista cadres have begun analyzing
and correcting their past mistakes, and the popular
movement is digging in for what promises to be a
tough and protracted struggle.

Many of those who voted for UNO now say
that they regret having swapped principle (their
support for the revolution) for pragmatism (their

desire to end the Contra war and their belief that
the economy would improve.) If there were an
election or an armed uprising tomorrow, the San-
dinistas would have the overwhelming support of
the army, the police, the trade unions, and the peo-
ple in general — 80% of whom, according the re-
cent statistics, are living in conditions of poverty.
But the overthrow of the Chamorro/UNO junta
would undoubtedly be a bloody process, and the
U.S. and its surrogate armies in Central America
would probably intervene. So, for the moment at
least, the Sandinista grassroots have decided to try
to co-govern with the Chamorro gang, rather than
overthrow them.

But peace and prosperity seem as far away as
ever. A number of articulate Nicaraguans have ex-
pressed to me this year the belief that they do not
expect to eventually gain their definitive liberation,
but perhaps only at the same time that their Sal-
vadoran and Guatemalan companeros do. In the
Brave New World of the 1990s, no individual coun-
try is likely to be allowed to gain its independence
from Big Brother and to chart an independent or al-
ternative path. What
Central Americans and
Latinos in general are
facing is nothing less
than a hemispheric
crisis, for which the only
possible solution is a
regionalized solidarity
and a regionalized resis-
tance. Unfortunately,
this adds up to a very
long struggle, and many
of the people on the
bottom are already war-
weary.

4. Guatemala

Staring out of a
slightly cracked and dirty window on the Galgos
(Greyhound) bus, I am fascinated by the scenery
and activity along the roadside. The 1990 sugar
cane harvest is in full swing on the agro-export
plantations of Guatemala's Pacific coast, and the
lush fields are filled with canecutters. According to
economic projections, this will be the longest and
most profitable sugar cane harvest in the country's
history. Across the aisle from me, an old lady,
wearing rubber sandals and a tattered dress, is re-
fusing to pay the recently increased ticket price of

SUMMER 1991 page 33

four quetzales (one dollar U.S.), insisting to the
rude and threatening conductor that she has only
three and a half quetzales. Yesterday, in Guatemala
City, high school students built barricades and
blocked streets in protest against the rise in bus
fares.

As we roar past a campesina woman and her
young, barefoot daughter on the side of the high-
way, both staggering under heavy loads of firewood
strapped to their backs, I am reminded of the in-
credible greed and ruthlessness of the economic
elite who run this country -- the 2% of the
agribusiness operators who control 72% of the na-
tion's arable land. It makes me angry to think about
how the Ladino landed gentry are able to get away
with paying 19th century wages -- between 64 cents
and $1.45 per day - for 10-12 hours of backbreak-
ing field work. Among the strawhatted, sweating
canecutters, swinging their machetes, there are
children who look no more than six years old. The
indigenous and rural people call their child labour-
ers hombrecitos and mujercilas (little men and
wimmin), and many a family would literally starve
to death if their children were in school instead of
working alongside them in the fields.

Of course, in the light of the 147,000 assassi-
nations and disappearances carried out by plantation
gunmen and government security forces since the
U.S. -inspired military coup of 1954, one has to
think twice before insisting to one's patron that he
raise one's wages, or repair the stinking galera one
sleeps in, or provide potable drinking water so that
one's family does not die from intestinal parasites.
And yet, several weeks ago, 60,000 jxnca workers
were brave enough to go on strike in the adjoining
departments of Retalhuleu, Suchitepequez, and Es-
cuintla, demanding better wages and working
conditions. As usual, the plantation owners called

out the military and threatened to fire everyone,
while the so-called "fledgling democracy" of Presi-
dent Vinicio Cerezo cynically promised to facilitate
negotiations between the patrones and the
fieldworkers' union (the semi-clandestine
Campesino Unity Committee CUC, which in turn is
part of the larger united front, Trade Union and
Popular Action coalition, UASP.) Eight weeks
later, nothing has come of these negotiations. A
similar strike took place in January of last year,
with similar results.

In the short distance between the Mexican bor-
der and Malacatan, we have already been stopped
and searched four times -- twice by the Treasury
Police, once by the National Police, and now by the
military. The bus driver tells me that they're look-
ing for drugs. But, when I discretely ask the young
woman in a blue school uniform sitting next to me
if this many registros are common in San Marcos,
she leans over and half whispers that the army is
looking for the guerrillas, who have been stopping
vehicles on the highway and collecting "war taxes",
as well as invading the larger fincas up and down
the coast.

According to Guatemalan news sources, in
1989 the country's leftwing guerillas, the URNG
(National Revolutionary Unity of Guatemala), set
up blockades of roadways 187 times, temporarily
occupied 11 municipal or county centres, and in-
vaded 167 villages and fincas. As a Cakchikel In-
dian migrant labourer in Solola later explains, many
of the large landowners in Guatemala are being
forced to pay higher wages on their fincas after
these invasions by the URNG -- who typically
threaten to burn down the patrones' buildings or
seize their crops if they continue to abuse their
workers. In retaliation, hired hitmen and soldiers
have launched a murderous wave of repression,
singling out campesino and indigenous activists for
assassination.

Today's newspaper reports that six dead bod-
ies have been discovered in the agro-export Pacific
region in the last 24 hours ~ all bearing the typical
marks of deathsquad-style executions. As a Na-
tional Police officer admitted to me last year in the
conflict-ridden zone of Santiago Atitlan, these types
of assassinations are never investigated. Whenever
there are obvious signs of death squad operations,
i.e. groups of assailants or kidnappers with military
type uniforms or weapons, vehicles with polarized
windshields and license plates removed, corpses
with multiple wounds or evidence of torture or mu-
tilation, etc., law enforcement and judicial authori-
ties never get involved, lest they themselves be-

page34 KICK IT OVER #26

come the next victims. At the end of March, the
department of San Marcos records yet another In-
dian massacre, as five indigenous wimmin are kid-
napped, mutilated and murdered.

As we approach a heavily guarded bridge just
outside Coatepeque, I notice that a number of sol-
diers and pedestrians are leaning over the railing,
looking down into the river. "Un muerto," (a dead
body,) the driver says nonchalantly, as he stops the
bus to let a green-uniformed Treasury policeman
climb on board.

Several hours later, we are slowed to a halt by
the largest traffic jam I've ever seen in Central
America. Cars, buses and trucks, many loaded
down with the cotton and sugar cane harvest, are
backed up for miles on both sides of the Coyolate
River bridge, destroyed in a spectacular sabotage
action by URNG guerrillas last December. The
bridge is a strategic artery for passenger and crop
transportation in the Pacific region, and its destruc-
tion by the UMBRA is a potent reminder that the
Guatemalan resistance has expanded from its tra-
dional zones of operations in the highlands and jun-
gles into the economic
heartland of the
country. Instead of the
normal traffic flow, we
are forced to drive, one
vehicle at a time, over a
U.S. military supplied
"Bailey" bridge, with
the massive, twisted
steel and concrete of the
old bridge structure
lying in the river gorge
below. On part of the
destroyed bridge,
hanging over the
precipice, the army has
neatly spray-painted a
propaganda message:

"A Gift from the URNG
to the Very Noble Peo-
ple of Guatemala."

As I watch the
sunset from a park
bench in the picturesque
town plaza of Antigua,
five personnel carriers.

Armadillos, rumble
through the cobblestone
streets. Recent fighting,
artillery fire, and aerial
bombing in the nearby

villages of Santa Maria de Jesus and Magdalena
Milpas Altas have alarmed the residents of this
popular tourist spot, located 45 km. west of the
capital city. According to local military sources,
there's a fear that the URNG may be planning to
disrupt Antigua's Easter Week celebrations this
year, when thousands of foreign visitors and upper
class Guatemalans converge on the city.

Since the powerful Salvadoran FMLN guer-
rilla offensive of November 1989, the U.S. inva-
sion of Panama the next month, and the February
25 1990 Nicaraguan elections, more and more
opposition activists in Guatemala seem to agree that
only a regional resistance campaign, coupled with
internal changes in the USA, will bring about a
negotiated, socially just solution to the generalized
crisis of the region. Thousands of highly politicized
Salvadorans have taken temporary refuge in
Guatemala over the last few months, and their in-
teractions with the aboveground and clandestine re-
sistance here seem to have had a beneficial effect on
the overall morale of the movement.

If the Salvadorans can eventually defeat their
death squad democracy,
so can the Guatemalans.
Unfortunately, the Bush
administration can be
expected to try to crush
any future leftwing
revolution in the
hemisphere, as the
recent Nicaraguan
experience shows. As
an activist in the
countryside recently
explained to me,
Guatemala and the
countries of Latin
America will eventually
gain their liberation --
but more as a bloc,
rather than individually
-- and in the meantime,
it's going to be a long,
bloody struggle. For the
moment, things are
worse than ever in
Guatemala and Central
America, but the signs
of grassroots rebellion
and resistance appear to
be growing.

SUMMER 1991 page 35

SLIDEBANK FOR SOCIAL ACTIVISTS

Have you run out of friends and relatives to
show your slides to and now those slides sit on a
closet shelf - unorganized, unused, unseen, unap-
preciated? Well, that was the beginning of an idea
that culminated in the founding of the Kai Slide
Bank, a slide collection for social change activists
in helping to make slide show documentaries. Ma-
jor categories include Pollution, Sexism, Violence,
Racism, Transportation, Health, Class, Economics,
and Native Peoples, in addition to Children,
Women, Men, Animals, Birds, Graphics, Energy,
Industry and Peace.

But why start such a slide bank? Because in
major cities commercial slide banks in North Amer-
ica start with fees of $70.00 per slide! So Kai Slide
Bank was established seven years ago with the
collections of its founding members, and was in-
corporated as a
non-profit group
with fees as near
to cost as
possible (as long
as showings are
non-commercial
and no one is
making money
from the final
product. In those
cases, a sliding
scale is used).

As word
spread, people
with under-used
slides gathering
dust were

encouraged to
bring them out of
those closets and
to place them in
the collection, so
that now there
are nearly 15,000
slides available,
and one feature of the collection is worth noting:
the photographers continue to own their pictures,
not Kai Slide Bank. The slide bank only wishes
access to the slides, not to own them, and so asks
photographers to leave them on file for a minimum
of five years in order to guarantee maximum circu-
lation. (In the unlikely event that Kai Slide Bank

should ever fold, the slides would continue to be
the property of the photographer and not of the
slide bank.)

The individuals and groups that have used the
collection to date are many and varied: Black The-
atre Canada, Medical Aid to Nicaragua, the Ba-
hai Peace Project, CUSO, the Coalition for Les-
bian and Gay rights in Ontario, OPIRG, the Na-
tive Canadian Centre, and Pollution Probe among
scores of others. The documentaries these groups
and individuals have made include such issues as
uranium mining, anti-racism work, women's issues,
homophobia, alternate schools, patient-oriented
health clinics and class issues. And the slide bank
itself has made an introductory slide show on how
to make effective slide shows, complete with 140
slides, audio cassette and a copy of the script. Its

title: How to

Make a Slide
Show for Social
Change. Kai
Slide Bank sells
this kit at cost,
$190.00 Cdn.
Running time is
thirty-four
minutes.

If, then, you
are a picture
taker who'd like
to see your slides
used in a positive
way, get in touch
with the Slide
Bank. They are
looking for well-
exposed, in-focus
slides (not prints)
that might relate
to any of their
major categories.
Content is as
important as
beauty; they need slum shots as much as palm trees.
And what's in it for you? Recognition by way of
photo credits where possible, and the satisfaction of
seeing your slides put to good use. And knowing
that, instead of owning slides that are fading on a
shelf, your pictures are being stored under archival

SUMMER 1991 page 36

conditions (temperature/light controlled) and that
you still have access to them.

The name of this unique group, Kai Slide
Bank honours Kai Yutah Clouds, one of their co-
workers and a long time activist in Native issues.
When Kai discovered that the toxic chemicals DDT
and Aldrin were being shipped by US charities like
Oxfam to Guatemalan Native peoples following the
1976 earthquake (both chemicals are banned in
North America) he returned to that region to try to
undo some of the damage multinationals were in-
flicting there for reasons of their own profit. Unfor-
tunately, the Guatemalan government discovered
his work by a mistake made when friends in
Toronto publicized his work without his permis-
sion. Within weeks he was seized and tortured to
death.

For more information or details on Kai Slide
Bank, write to

Kai Slide Bank
P O Box 5490, Station A
Toronto, Ontario Canada M5W 1N7
Telephone: (416) 964-1278

" So Karl , you think that the
parliamentary road will lead
to social revolution, eh ? "

SMASHING THE IRON RICEPOT

Smashing the Iron Rice Pot
by Leung-Wing-yue

Published by Asia Labour Monitor @ 1988
Reviewed by Bruce Allen

Last year's events in China at first amazed and
then outraged people around the world. Almost no
one anticipated them and few seemed to grasp their
meaning. Unfortunately, labour organizations
proved to be no different in this respect and, conse-
quently, were nowhere to be seen during the
protests following the Beijing Massacre.

Labour organizations should have been promi-
nent in the outcry. A strong working class presence
would have demonstrated a real commitment to the
defense of basic democratic rights. It would also
have enabled us to stress that workers comprise a
mighty force within China's democratic movement,
and how worker involvement in last year’s events
gave birth to an independent Chinese labour move-
ment. In addition, such working class participation
in the protests would have been a timely show of
solidarity with workers in a country striving to be-
come a real force in the world economy.

Asia Labour Monitor's recently released book
Smashing the Iron Rice Pot is indispensable both
to grasping this latter development and seeing the
related need for an independent Chinese labour

SUMMER 1991 page 37

movement. This new work also helps us to see why
so many Chinese workers made common cause with
the students and why it is in international labour's
interest to support the struggles of both groups.

"'lOe can- only begin- to tacQCe- the

concrete- and barbed- wire
that divides our world-
when- we start toiih that
on our cion- doorstep V

The two main concerns addressed in Smash-
ing the Iron Rice Pot are labour organization in
China and the impact of recent Chinese economic
reforms on workers. The book's author clearly
shows that the existing trade unions in China are ef-
fectively subordinate to the ruling Chinese Com-
munist Party. He also shows that, despite this,
these unions have exerted some organizational au-
tonomy, with the degree varying according to
changes in the ruling party's leadership and corre-
sponding shifts in the Chinese government’s indus-
trial strategy.

The author likewise reveals that the economic
reforms of the last decade were imposed from
above without much input from the trade unions,
and with mainly negative effects on workers. These
reforms, we are told, set China's economy on a
new course marked by an opening to investment
from other Pacific Rim countries and the west.
They included measures to reduce central planning
of the economy, enhance the power of enterprise
managers and to create Special Economic Zones
where foreign transnationals enjoy unprecedented

opportunities to exploit China's vast underpaid
work force.

Due to the reforms, the real incomes of many
workers have risen. But, according to the author,
the changes have also led to widespread unemploy-
ment, worsening industrial safety standards, weak-
ened social security, widespread forced overtime
and even the removal of the right to strike from
China's constitution.

The author maintains that the transnationals
applied much of the pressure for these anti-worker
reforms. Their implementation showed that China's
rulers are quite willing to slash labour costs to at-
tract foreign currency and technology.

The author also stresses that due to the re-
forms China now offers transnational corporations
the cheapest labour force in Asia. He further notes
that this has even led to situations where corpora-
tions located in countries like the Philippines have
responded to union activity with threats to shut
plants down and move them to China.

The picture presented is not entirely bleak,
however. The reader is given ample information
concerning worker resistance, and it is noted that
the Special Economic Zones are particularly prone
to strikes. Most significantly, the author notes how
the wave of student protests affecting ten cities in
December 1986 was accompanied by worker un-
rest, including strikes, that alarmed China's rulers.
This reveals that the 1989 Beijing Spring was but
the most recent and spectacular chapter in an on-
going struggle for democratic change.

In view of this and the worsening abuse of
China's workers rooted in the drive to integrate
China into a world economy dominated by a few
hundred corporations, the need for working class
militants in all countries to take a serious interest in
the struggles of China's workers should be obvious.
So should the need to take a serious look at this in-
valuable and insightful work.

Bruce Allen is an activist in CAW Local 199 and
the author of Germany East: Dissent and Opposi-
tion, published by Black Rose Books.

page 38 KICK IT OVER #26

THE GLOBAL VILLAGE

Tribes Forcibly Moved

INDONESIA: An earthquake which killed over 100
people in August 1989 has been used by the In-
donesian government as an excuse for the forcible
removal of the Hupla tribal people, who were trans-
ferred to a lowland site under the pretext of provid-
ing them with geologically stable land. The Hupla
were told that they would receive no further emer-
gency aid if they did not leave their lands, which
are believed to be rich in mineral resources.

The land on which they were settled, at Ele-
lim, is already owned by another tribe and infested
with tropical diseases, to which the highland Hupla
have no resistance. Within the first few months of
the program, 15 of them died of malaria or malnu-
trition. Over $125,000 worth of aid sent to the Hu-
pla by other countries and the Indonesian people
was seized by Indonesia, and some of it was used to
fund the coercive resettlement program. Only the
donations channelled through church organizations
reached the people. The forcible resettlement is part
of a plan by Indonesia to move tens of thousands of
tribespeople out of the resource-rich Baliem Gorge
region so that the state can seize the resources and
the people can be coerced into "civilizing."
from: Survival Bulletin,

October, 1990.

Major Polluters Listed

NEW YORK: The Earth Day Wall Street Action
Handbook recently listed the fifteen top corporate
contributors to global pollution, based on 1987 fig-
ures and identifying only major pollutants, as be-
ing:

DuPont -- firearms, ammunition, polyester
and acrylic fibers. Income: $33.3 billion; outgo:
223.3 million pounds of chlorobenzene.

Royal Dutch Shell - gas and oil, Dieldrin pes-
ticide. Income: ?; outgo: 211.1 million pounds of
acids and petrochemical pollution.

British Petroleum -- polyethylene, Purina pet
foods. Income: $1.2 billion; outgo: 197.2 million
pounds of petrochemical pollution.

American Cyanamide - Old Spice, Pine-Sol,
Roach Control. Income: $305 million; outgo: 120.3
pounds of acids and solvents.

Occidental Petroleum -- oil, IBP beef and
pork. Income: $302 million; outgo: 114.6 pounds
of chlorine and solvents.

Agrico Chemical Company -- fiber optics. In-
come: $98 million; outgo: 100.9 pounds of acids.

ASARCO -- silver, lead, zinc, asbestos min-
ing. Income: $207 million; outgo; 95.2 pounds of
heavy metals.

EXXON — gasoline, coal mining, nuclear fuel
fabrication. Income: $76.4 billion; outgo: 85.1 mil-
lion pounds of petrochemicals and oil spills.

Inland Steel -- steel, iron, limestone. Income:
$262 million; outgo: 81.5 million pounds of toxic
metals.

Monsanto — Nutra Sweet, polystyrene,
Roundup, Bovine Growth hormone. Income: $591
million; outgo: 75.8 pounds of metals, dioxin,
PCBs.

Eastman Kodak -- film, paper, chemicals. In-
come: $17 billion; outgo: 75.8 million pounds of
chlorinated solvents.

Vulcan Chemicals — dry cleaning chemicals.
Income: ?; outgo: 73.4 million pounds of pen-
tachlorophenol, solvents and phosgene gas.

Dow Chemicals -- Saran Wrap, Cepacol,
Spray'n’Wash, napalm. Income: $16.6 billion;
outgo: 23.3 million pounds of petrochemicals.

Urban Carbide -- chemicals, carbon, plastics,
industrial gases. Income: $11.9 billion; outgo: 23.5

SUMMER 1991 page 39

million pounds of petrochemicals.

Pfizer Pharmaceuticals -- Coty products, re-
combinant DNA research. Income: ~$5.4 billion;
outgo: 11,200,000 pounds of metals,
from: Earth Day Wall Street Action Handbook,
P.O. Box 1128, Old Chelsea Stn,

New York, NY,

USA 10011.

Who Owns What

USA: Here are some statistics about the USA com-
piled by Labour Research Association/Z Magazine:
total household wealth owned by top 1 % of popula-
tion: 34%.

total household wealth owned by bottom 80%:
18.5%

total household wealth owned by bottom 40%:
0 . 8 %

total financial wealth owned by top 1%: 48%
total financial wealth owned by bottom 80%: 6%
total financial wealth owned by bottom 60%: 0.7%
value of outstanding stock shares owned by top 1 % :
90%

ratio of average corporate executive's salary to that
of a blue-collar worker in 1980: 25 to 1 .
ratio today: 90 to 1.

number of billionaires in America in 1978: 1.
number today: 99.

number of millionaires in America in 1978:
450,000.

number today: 2 million.

income ratio of the top 20% of Americans to the
bottom 20%: 12 to 1.

same ratio in West Germany: 5 to 1. in Japan: 4 to

1 .

percentage of U.S. federal government's debt
owned by top 10%: 80.

amount taxpayers paid in interest on federal debt
since 1981: $1.3 trillion,
from: The Portland Alliance v.ll, n.3
2807 S.E. Stark,

Portland, Oregon,

USA 97214. (subs $15 U.S.)

Moratorium a Sham

PAPUA NEW GUINEA: The two-year moratorium
on the issuance of new timber permits here, an-
nounced last April in an attempt to rectify gross
disregard of environmental regulations and illegal
issuance of timber permits, was applauded by the
international community but now appears to have

•*7

been a farce. So many exemptions were allowed to
create new timber rights purchases that the morato-
rium was effectively gutted. In Madang province,
for instance, roughly one third of the remaining for-
est is now covered by new permits, with no
landowner associations established to approve
them. One company that has been indicted for ille-
gal timber practices has been given permission to
continue operating under a new name. Those con-
cerned should write: Karl Stack, Minister of
Forests, Department of Forests, P.O. Box 5055,
Boroko, Papua New Guinea.

Rainforest Action Network
301 Broadway, suite A,

San Francisco, CA
USA 94133.

(to subscribe, donate $15-$100 U.S.)

Blood For Oil in Ecuador

ECUADOR-Among examples of the rape of the
Ecuadorian Amazon by American oil companies:

page 40 KICK IT OVER 426

-Texaco has spilled an estimated 17 million gallons
of oil, and plans to abandon the area where this has
happened without cleaning it up.

-Conoco (a subsidiary of DuPont) is developing an
oil project that, by the end of the century, will
obliterate the culture of an entire people, the Huao-
rani.

-ARCO is developing nearly half a million acres of
untouched rainforest for oil production; it has al-
ready cleared over two thousand acres, destroying
many purinas (agricultural subsistence lands) de-
veloped by the natives. Water pollution caused by
inadequate waste treatment at oil camps has led to
skin and stomach disease among the natives, who
are being "pacified" by the Ecuadorian military and
American evangelical missionaries.

The Ecuadorian Amazon is home to an estimated
ten per cent of all species on earth. Protest letters
may be written to:

Lodwrick M. Cook,

Chief Executive Officer,

ARCO,

515 Flower Street,

Los Angeles, CA
USA 90071.

Rainforest Action Network,

March, 1991 Bulletin,

301 Broadway, Suite A,

San Francisco, CA,

USA 94133.

World Bank Destroys Rainforest

Since the early 1980s, the World Bank has spon-
sored the disastrous Polonoroeste "development"
project in the Amazonian rainforest in northwestern
Brazil, loaning $500 million to build a 1000-mile
road through rainforests in the states of Rondonia

and Mato Grosso. Encouraged by their govern-
ment, over a million landless poor from other parts
of the country have migrated to the region to estab-
lish farms. They clear forest, destroying most of
the fragile soil in the process, and so are only able
to grow crops for a few seasons. As crops fail, set-
tlers move on to clear new land, further deforesting
the Amazon. Mining activities have further de-
graded rainforest ecosystems, causing toxic mer-
cury contamination in the entire food chain along
the Madeira River. Denied even the most basic
health services, the Indians face extinction from
disease.

Having failed to live up to its previous
promises to protect certain areas from being cut
down, Brazil is now seeking an additional $167 mil-
lion from the World Bank to "protect" the remain-
ing areas from deforestation. Until it does begin
living up to past agreements, Brazil should be de-
nied this loan.

Canada contributes over $300 million a year
to the World Bank, and Canadians are asked to
write urging this policy to their MP, to the federal
finance minister, and to Frank Potter, Executive
Director for Canada, World Bank, 1818 H Street
NW, Washington DC USA 20433. For more
information:

Friends of the Rainforest
Box 4612, Station E,

Ottawa Canada
K1S 5H8.

SUMMER 1991 page 41

In Brief

Help Eastern Bloc

• Adopt- A-Group is proposing a direct group-
to-group contact and exchange between anarchist
groups in eastern and central Europe with those in
the west. Isolated by decades of Stalinist repression
and isolation, the eastern groups have had access to
few anarchist books, pamphlets, magazine subscrip-
tions, fliers of local activities, cassettes and other
resources. Instead of each western group trying to
inform all the eastern groups, this project proposes
that each group here focus on one groups there and
send them whatever materials they request. The
western group could organize benefits to give fi-
nancial assistance to its adopted group.

Anarchist groups wishing to be networked in
this manner should contact:

Stephen Dankowich

ACT for Disarmament (Toronto)

225 Brunswick A v en u

Toronto, Canada jnKtUHttlBgt

M5S 2M6. flHH

Anarchist Research Centre

LAUSANNE: The library of the International
Centre for Research on Anarchism (CIRA) is open
at its new premises. Services such as loans, bio-
graphical information, etc. are available for all

readers having paid the annual subscription fee
(Sw. fr. 40, or the equivalent of approximately US
$25, UK 15 pounds.) Consultation is also possible
by correspondence; books are loaned abroad; pho-
tocopies of publications and articles can be pro-
vided; a twice-yearly bulletin is published.

The library will be open every weekday from
4 to 7 p.m., or by appointment.

CIRA

Avenue de Beaumont 24
CH-1012

Lausanne, Switzerland

Tel. (021) 32 48 19 or 32 35 43

Smoke Detectors Dangerous

McCALL, IDAHO: Researcher Craig Wasson re-
ports that there's at least a 95% chance that the
smoke detector in your home contains extremely
dangerous radioactive material. The name of this
material is Americium 241, the radioactive by-
product of depleted Plutonium 239 (nuclear waste.)

At one time, smoke detectors used photoelec-
tric cell detectors, in which harmless visible light
was deflected by smoke particles to a photo-cell in
order to trigger its alarm. Now, however, the alarm
is triggered by Americium 241. According to Dr.
Edward A. Martell, an environmental radiochemist
with the National Centre for Atmospheric Research
in Boulder, Colorado, "there are thousands of lethal
doses in one microcurie of Americium 241.”

Why the change? Many states that had once
allowed nuclear waste to be dumped in their soil,
accepting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's
(NRC) assurances of safety, had changed their
minds about both the waste and the Commission,
and didn't want any more of either. Faced with the
problem of what to do with the nuclear waste that
was accumulating at a staggering rate at all nuclear
reactor sites, the NRC decided that smoke detectors
would be a good place for it.

The NRC has licensed and promoted the legal
and moral transfer of an unbelievably toxic ra-
dioactive waste, which will remain dangerously
toxic and carcinogenic for thousands of years, by
selling it to householders under the guise of pro-
tecting themselves and their families from fire.
These appointed bureaucrats have consistently over-

pay 42 KICK IT OVER §26

ridden such elected politicians as have tried to stop
this procedure. (From the author's research paper.)

Human Economy Network

The Human Economy Network is facilitating
communication between persons who wish to con-
tribute to the development of alternative economics.
Its goals include:

Assisting the work of existing organizations which
share similar concerns (including The Other
Economic Summit TOES, the Society for a
Human Economy, The Living Economy Net-
work/U.K., and the Society for the Advance-
ment of Socio-Economics, among others.)
Attracting new people to ’
this network, and
introducing them to
these organizations.

Identifying the interests
of network

participants, and
putting those with
similar concerns in
contact with each
other.

Facilitating dialogues
among participants,
through both a
newsletter and
easy-to-use
computer linkages.

To join the
network, one need only
fill in a questionnaire
identifying specific
area(s) of interest in economics, for the purpose ot
preparing a directory of participants grouped by
common concerns.

Present communications arrangements include:

1. The "Networking Column" of the Human
Economy Newsletter, a quarterly publication of the
Society for a Human Economy at Mankato State
University. Sample copies can be obtained by
writing directly to the Society at Box 14,
Department of Economics, Mankato State
University, Mankato, MN USA 56001.

2. Computer conferences, via BITNET and
other electronic networks. The BITNET/CERN
system presently links over 3,000 academic
institutions worldwide, and provides access to
various electronic bulletin boards including
ECONET, PEACENET and GREENET.

STARVATION IS GOD'S
WAY OF PUNISHING
THOSE WHO HAVE
LITTLE OR NO FAITH
IN CAPITALISM...

For further information:
Professor Don Cole
Human Economy Network
c/o Economics Department
Drew University
Madison, New Jersey
USA 07940.

Pagan Resources Directory

The Directory of Canadian Pagan Resources is
the only comprehensive directory of resources for
Witches, Dianics, Faeries, neo-Pagans, Druids, and
others spiritually attuned to Nature and the Goddess
and Old Gods in Canada . It lists, free of charge,

newsletters, gatherings,
bookstores, covens and
individuals (with written
permission), and other
resources in the
community. The 1990
Directory (#3) was
issued May, 1990 and
costs $3. Information or
copies:

Sam Wagar

Obscure Pagan

Press/Pagans for Peace
P.O. Box. 86134,

North Vancouver, B.C.
Canada V7L 2L9.

Political Prisoners
Documented

Free copies of the book The Dark Side of Eu-
rope, listing more than 100,000 political prisoners,
have been sent to political prisoners and anti-re-
pressive organizations in Europe and America. Sale
price is 700 ptes (Spanish,) including postal expen-
ditures. For orders:

Dark Side of Europe
Aptat. no 2.192
Barcelona 08080
Spain.

Anarchist Literature

For a full range of anarchist books, periodi-
cals and pamphlets, including the hard-to-get, small

SUMMER 1991 page 43

press stuff, send a few bucks (preferably in interna-
tional money order, English pounds) to:

AK Distribution
3 Balmoral Place
Stirling

Scotland FK8 2R

Prison - Guinea Pigs

It’s funny how you know it’s true, but you're
still shocked to read the details. We've received a
booklet called Medical Experiments on American
Prisoners, detailing this sordid aspect of U.S. penal
reality, (no price given.) Write:

Air Water Earth
PO Box 311712
New Braunfels, Texas
USA 78131

Changing Men

The magazine Changing Men has just released
its 10th Anniversary Issue. Articles include: Issues
for Men in the 1990s, Can White Heterosexual Men
Understand Oppression?, The Men's Movement
and the Survival of African-American Men in the
90 's, plus lots more. $6/issue, $24/year from:
Changing Men
306 N. Brooks
Madison, Wisconsin
USA 53715

Unusual Lore

Flatland, a Catalogue of Unusual Lure, lists a
wide variety of periodicals, books and pamphlets.
"The last time I bought a book in a store I read the
back cover, and it made it seem fascinating. When I

got home, I read it.... boring." Everything at Flat-
land is 100% guaranteed: if you don't like it, return
it. Catalogue $2:

Flatland
PO Box 2420
Fort Bragg, California
USA 95437-2420

Studies in Catalonia

A Foundation for Libertarian and Anarcho-
Syndicalist Studies is being established in Catalo-
nia, to promote the study of anarcho-syndicalism
and the libertarian movement through exhibitions,
conferences and the accumulation of publications. It
would like to organize an exchange of publications
with any group interested. Contact:

Fundo d'Estudis Libertaris
Placa Due de Medinaceli,

6 Entr. la.

Barceona, Spain 08002

War Resisters' Conference

War Resisters' International will hold its
Twentieth Triennial Conference near Brussels July
28- August 1, and all sympathizers are invited. It
will be a mixture of small meetings where everyone
can participate, larger sessions, workshops and key
forums on the Gulf Massacre and on implications of
social change in Eastern Europe, Latin America and
South Africa. There will be theme groups meeting
daily on a variety of topics related to nonviolence,
the arms trade, ecology, the New World Order,
ecology, peace education and anti-sexism. Cost is
95 pounds per person. Followed by business meet-
ing August 2-3. For information and registration:
War Resisters' International
55 Dawes Street
London SE17 1EL
England

Survival for Tribal Peoples

Survival International is seeking to expand its
membership, in order to increase the work it is do-
ing on behalf of tribal peoples threatened with
extinction. Successes to date include reduction of
malaria from 90% to 10% among Yanomani tribes
in Brazil (although genocide is still being practiced
against them,) establishment of a reserve for the

page 44 KICK IT OVER #26

Waorani Indians of Ecuador's Amazonia, preserva-
tion of the Central Kalahari Reserve for Kalahari
Bushpeople and production of a report on the
Sarawak situation in the tribal language. Survival
helps fund Amazon Indian organizations and the
occasional smallscale self-help project, such as one
in the Philippines where displaced tropical forest
Aroman Manobo people are finding their self-suffi-
ciency again through small buffalo herds. But in
Brazil one Indian tribe has been wiped out every
year this century. To join or send donations, write:
Survival International
310 Edgware Road
London W2 1DY
United Kingdom

Clothes for First Nations

Readers who tend to discard clothing in good-
to-eexcellent condition might instead consider fol-
lowing the example of two Toronto wimmin who,
in keeping with the sharing traditions of their
Ukrainian ancestry, began collecting such clothes
from their acquaintances for shipment to various
first nations reservations in the Toronto vicinity.
They ship clothing for men, wimmin and children,
and are particularly interested in donations of
clothing for large wimmin, who often have trouble
finding good secondhand clothes. When the dona-
tions they received came to exceed the needs of the
first native groups, they began taking clothes to
various wimmin's counselling centres, many of
whose clients require such clothing for court ap-
pearances. Clothes that are too lightweight to be of
use on Canadian reservations are given to the
Guyana Aid Foundation.

If you live in the Toronto area and would like
to donate clothes, or if you live elsewhere and
would like their advice on how to start a similar
project in your area, please call Alys 947-0808 or
Lilian 759-9124 (area code 416.) No collect calls,
please.

Wimmin's Self Care

Sojourner, a feminist magazine, includes in its
March 1991 issue the Second Annual Wimmin's
Health Supplement "Caring for Our Selves," featur-
ing articles about lay midwives, menopause, femi-
nist health centres and much more, in addition to its
usual fine range of articles. $2/issue, $ 17.50/year
from:

Sojourner
42 Seaverns Ave.

SUMMER 1991 page 45

Letters To The Editor

Editors' note: One of KIO's aims is to compare
various approaches to saving our environment - social
ecology , deep ecology , bioregionalism etc. We welcome
submissions on any of these positions. Although writers
are welcome to address any point made by a previous
writer that they wish to dispute , we ask that in future
they refrain from interpersonal attacks and invective. We
will likely edit such attacks from future submissions we
print. We have not done so in this letter , as it is in the
spirit of an ongoing controversy going back several is-
sues, before this stipulation was made.

"Anarchist" Label Abused

As a matter of record, I would like to clarify cer-
tain views that were imputed by Bill McCormick in the
last issue of Kick It Over. Am I an admirer of Karl
Marx and of certain writers of the Frankfurt school, as
McCormick alarmingly claims? The ghastly truth can be
stated quite bluntly: yes, I am. I am also an admirer of —
and have worked with the ideas of — Heraclitus, Aris-
totle, Diderot, Rousseau, Hegel, Proudhon, Bakunin,
Kropotkin and Theodore Adorno ~ all in varying de-
grees and with many critical reservations. And I also
happen to be the author of Listen, Marxist /, Marxism as
Bourgeois Sociology , and On Neo-Marxism, Bureau-
cracy, and the Body Politic, not to speak of scores of
pages over several books advancing an in-depth libertar-
ian critique of Marx and Marxism, as McCormick fully
knows — and demagogically ignores.

If a 1982 quotation by my good friend John Clark
that imputes a Marxist thrust to my writings is conclu-
sive proof of my failure to tote a hidden anarchist line to
which McCormick is privy, the more mystical and reli-
gious readers of Kick It Over may be consoled to know
that a few years later, Clark imputed a strong Taoist
thrust to my writings. Frankly, I am neither a Marxist or
a Taoist, but a social ecologist. My point? To find out
what I think, it would be wise to read what I write about
my ideas — and to read quotations from my works in
their proper context — not to rely on what other people
say my ideas are, especially when these others are quoted
by basically dishonest "critics” like McCormick.

If any doubts exist that McCormick's letter con-
tains wanton distortions of my ideas (this is a consistent
failure of all his letters against me), his treatment of my
views on open strip mining should dispel them. In my
last response to his Kick It Over (#23) criticism, I fell
back on strip mining only as a last recourse for human-
istic reasons because of the horrors of subsurface min-
ing. I argued that most of the metals we use should be
obtained "by salvaging the wastes of our vile society,"

not by compelling people to enter pits of the earth in or-
der to mine ores. Rather than see people endure the hor-
rors of subsurface mining, I argued, "I would gladly
open a surface mine with a 'great shovel' — if an eco-
logical society truly needed new ores and fuels — rather
than send human beings into the depths of the earth
where they know neither day nor night, clean air nor
skies, a peaceful nature or a cool breeze to provide the
steel for 'eco' -bicycles or the coke with which to smelt
them. "

In McCormick's hands, this concern for human
beings is turned into a "defense of open strip mining," as
though I condone what the mining corporations are do-
ing to the land. Never in my interchange with Mc-
Cormick have I read a line by him that shows the least
interest in exploited peoples and the victims of social
oppression. Instead, McCormick repeatedly recycles the
same distortions in his letters, apparently with the view
that no one will recall what either he or I said in our
previous interchanges. Thus, a situation has been created
in which McCormick never places a quotation from me
in its context, but shrewdly tailors selected phrases,
sentences and paragraphs from my writings and even
from writings of my critics and friends, in an attempt to
present my views in a form that is grossly distorted at
best and maliciously false at worst.

But there is more than distortion at work here.
Kick It Over readers should know that McCormick has
had the sheer gall to send me an unsolicited letter last
September in which ~ half-threatening, half-cajoling ~
he proposed to me an utterly unprincipled 'deal'.
"Regarding my 'trailing' you across several periodicals,
yes," wrote McCormick, in acknowledgement that he
was doing so in the opening lines of his first paragraph.
The paragraph concluded with the proposal: "As soon as
you stop the deliberate distortions [of deep ecology], I
guarantee [!] you there will be a corresponding and nec-
essary adjustment [!] in my own activities." In other
words, if I stop criticizing deep ecology, McCormick
will stop criticizing me — presumably, irrespective of my
alleged "Marxism," "anthropocentricity," "technological
mentality," etc. ad nauseam.

Regardless of whether I am "distorting" deep ecol-
ogy — and I strongly believe that I am not — I do not
make deals of any kind on matters of principle or on
ideas. McCormick, in my view, has turned what should
be a serious dialogue about the insidious nature of deep
ecology - with its religiosity, antihumanism, Malthusian
orientation and social quietism - into a calculated, cyni-
cal and systematic project of harassment, which renders
any future response to him demeaning.

Speaking more generally: I feel that sizable and
perhaps growing number of New Age types in North
America are now attaching the label "anarchist" to their
medley of mystical, religious, misanthropic, anti-intel-
lectual, and nihilistic grudges against anything that re-
motely resembles a coherent, humanistic (and I don't
mean "anthropocentric") body of ideas and a meaningful
practice directed towards social change. (I do not direct
these remarks at Charlene Spretnak, who makes no pre-
tense of being a radical of any kind and simply recycles
the same outrageous claim in latter after letter that any-
one who has the nerve to disagree with her is "dividing'
the Green movement.) I do not hesitate to emphasize that
I have absolutely nothing in common with people of this
kind. Whatever else I may feel about Marxist and liber-
tarian thinkers of the past, I consistently adhere to the
maxim, "Neither God [nor Goddess] nor Master! "

Among the more serious problems we face today is
not only the fact that capitalism has physically polluted
the planet. In our era of disempowerment and ideological
confusion, capitalism has created a largely mystical and
religious form of mental pollution that threatens to in-
volve people in a pseudo-spiritual inwardness and qui-
etism that is more self-indulgent than social. When a
theory of "rights' is extended to include rocks, and when
people are asked to "think like a mountain' instead of
thinking like human beings (to use the jargon of the deep
ecology movement), the very notion of "rights" becomes
so all-embracing and cosmic as to be meaningless, and
thought is divested of any rationality and powers of in-
sight. I am weary of seeing the high ideals of anarchism
dragged through the mud or degraded to cheap bumper-
sticker slogans.

As I approach seventy, I have encountered all too
many "anarchists" of two decades ago who have dis-
carded their spray cans and crash helmets, entered pro-
fessional schools, opened "ecologically responsible"
capitalist enterprises that could easily earn dubious
awards from the Utne Reader, or turned into outright
real estate sharks and Marxist professors. Their New
Age replicas in the 1990's are welcome to beat their
conga drums to Paleolithic deities, divines the mysteries
of "thinking like a mountain," fight for the "rights" of
rocks and try to save the planet with neurotic trances. If
readers of Kick It Over are interested in a thoughtful
attempt to restore the honor of anarchism and recognize
that ecological problems have their primary roots in so-
cial problems, I would ask them to communicate with
the Green Program Project, PO Box 111, Burlington,
Vermont 05402, USA. And if they want to do something
about changing this foul society with more than rituals
and incantations, I would urge them to communicate
with the Left Green Network (I'll forward their names),

the only serious left libertarian movement of which I
know in North America.

Murray Bookchin
Burlington, Vermont

Newfoundland Problems

The major threat to the extinction of New-
foundlanders as a distinct society in Canada is New-
foundland Municipal Affairs Minister Eric Gullage's
concept of super cities. This theory dictates that small
outpost towns be united to form larger ones. Rural mu-
nicipalities within a radius of 100 miles from St.Johns or
other large towns would be interwoven to eventually de-
vise enormous futuristic cities. Town councils and citi-
zens in Newfoundland feel that it's a destructive vision
that could be dangerous to the system, resulting in
higher taxes and added economic threats to the province.

The real threat, of course, is the annihilation of an
entire early European culture that has existed for over
500 years. It's evident everywhere-modem highrises,
fewer fishing boats, urban sprawl— as progress produces
prosperity and Newfoundland politicians, embarrassed
about their Newfie-goofy lifestyles and larger UIC and
welfare lines, believe that provincial creation of super
cities would conceal local poverty by creating super
ghettos. This was done in St. Johns in the 70s, when
mayors Murphy and Wyatt expropriated large areas of
the city's ghetto for commercial use. The fisheries and
fishermen which everybody associates with picturesque
Newfoundland and robust Newfoundlanders are slowly
and manipulatively becoming extinct due to European
overfishing and uncaring federal and provincial govern-
ments. Both government and opposition condone social
genocide, which they see as Progress or Americaniza-
tion.

But most awesome are the hidden players in this fi-
asco, large oil companies and possibly the CIA. They
slyly and stealthily mould and shape Newfoundland's
future in ways that small town politicians and media
can't even understand. There are also some shady and
extremely wealthy Newfoundland characters who are
manipulating and advocating U.S. ideas among New-
foundlanders, using the media. Buying large parcels of
land for the coming oil boom, well-off Newfoundlanders
have nothing to lose except their country. The victims
are the peasant class, who after twenty years of boom
face a lifetime of poverty.

Change is sweeping Newfoundland, and everybody
and everything with it. Good or bad? Only time will tell.

George Vokey
Spaniards Bay, Nfld

O Lord our Father,

our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to
battle - be Thou near them!

S®V.N

With theitH in spirit, vue also go- fjirth from the

- J !:.'i _ „x U ’l + omlto

sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the
foe. help to tear tlidjr soldiers ftp bloody shreds
with odr Sh^ls^el|\u4,to cove# jpeir smiling fields

with th^Hfiili^ieir Pfttfpt 0ead; help us to

.the shrieks of
to. lay

#&dbu ri^pg^of fire a
their ui|ttffe«dirtg |/|

waste

help u3--ifci^nte^e'TOY»..Y'wp^p',^ s ,./ <

widow|;j|ito^ th £fl?

out ro#f|s|fwi|h:;itti^"^ litt|sjMMfrjen fol^^derj/

lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy
their steps, Vvater their way #M'P#r tears, stain
the white snow yvi^the llilp^.df 't^il^dhd^d. ; ;

feet!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the
Source of Love, and seek His aid with humble and
contrite hearts.

AMEN.

-from The War Prayer
by Mark Twain